The History of Coronary Heart Disease

Abstract

Medical history has many facets —narrative accounts of discoveries and inventions; biographies of great men; relationships of medicine to the scientific, cultural, and philosophical background of different eras; socioeconomic features; and many others. One of the newer aspects to engage the attention of scholars is the history of particular diseases. Professor Leibowitz has given us a fascinating book on coronary heart disease, perhaps the most important disease of modern life. After a brief introductory survey, a sort of epitome of the book, he makes a detailed exposition of the various texts that can be construed as having to do with coronary heart disease. The periods of antiquity and the Middle Ages give greater difficulty, for the original descriptions were not oriented to 20th-century concepts. Leibowitz, however, indicates passages from Egyptian and biblical sources as well as the classical Greek physicians, the Talmudic and various medieval authors that he interprets as