Chest pain historical perspective

Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]; Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: Aisha Adigun, B.Sc., M.D.[2]

The first recorded description of chest pain was given by Benivieni, a Florentine physician, in the early 1500s. The first concise account of angina pectoris was given by the then Earl of Clarendon when he described his father’s illness. Angina pectoris was described by a medical practitioner when Dr. William Heberden read his paper to the College of Physicians in London on July 21st 1768.

• The first recorded description of chest pain was given by Benivieni, a Florentine physician, in the early 1500s. He documented a woman that was “sometimes troubled in her heart“. ^[1]
• Andreas Vesalius in 1555 associated “a sad feeling and pain in the heart” with heart disease. ^[2]
• The first concise account of angina pectoris was given by the then Earl of Clarendon when he described his father’s illness. ^[3]

“He was seized by so sharp a pain in the left arm . . . that the torment made him pale as he were dead, and he used to say that he passed the pangs of death and that he should die in one of those fits; as soon as it was over, which was quickly, he was the cheerfullest man living . . .”

• Angina pectoris was first described by a medical practitioner when Dr. William Heberden read his paper to the College of Physicians in London on July 21st 1768. ^[2][4]
• The association between coronary artery disease and chest pain was made by Edward Jenner in 1788 when he noticed a thickening of coronary arteries on the autopsy of subjects who had died from angina pectoris.^[5]
• In 1879, Heinrich Quincke was the first to discover the association between chest pain and the development of esophageal reflux disease.^[6][7]
• Abnormalities in coronary flow reserve in patients with angina and normal findings on coronary angiography were first reported by Opherk et al.^[8]