Circulation : The Beat Goes On

Abstract

The American Heart Association (AHA) was founded in 1924 to promote the research and education of physicians in the emerging specialty of cardiology. Within months of its founding, the AHA took its first major step to support this core mission by publishing the first American journal in the field, the American Heart Journal . The editor-in-chief, Lewis B. Conner, was a founder and the first president of the AHA. The editorial board included such historic figures as Paul D. White, James B. Herrick, Henry A. Christian, and Carl J. Wiggers. In his opening editorial, Conner wrote of “the truly revolutionary advances made in our knowledge of the normal and pathological physiology of the heart and its beat, along with the advances in understanding of its diseases and their management” and of “the conviction on the part of the AHA that such a journal might be a potent factor in the furtherance of its purposes - the better education of the medical profession in matters relating to the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of heart diseases.”1 In 1948, the AHA was transformed from what then-president of the association H.M. Marvin described as a relatively “small organization of doctors interested in the purely scientific aspects of cardiovascular disease into a large, national voluntary health agency with wide interests and broad responsibilities.”2 This “new” AHA needed a new journal, and in 1950, Circulation was born. Marvin went on to write: > This first issue of Circulation, the official journal of the AHA, represents a major step toward the realization of an ambition long cherished by the Editorial Board and by many of our members; namely, the creation of a scientific journal that shall be acknowledged as foremost in the world among those devoted to a special field of medicine….It is the firm purpose …