1910-1914

Crucial years in establishing the “new cardiology” in Britain (Lawrence, 18). It gained expression in John Marshall Cowan’s textbook on Diseases of the Heart of 1914 and George Sutherland’s Lumleian lectures of 1917: heart failure not a result of back pressure behind a damaged value but diminution of forward pressure exerted by left ventricle; symptoms, as supplemented by ECG and polygraph readings, not murmurs, were most reliable evidence of impaired heart action (19-20).