Voyaging in the Vein: Medical Experimentation with Heart Catheters in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

AbstractHistorical research on physiology has to date largely been confined to the rise and peak of physiological investigations in the 18th and 19th century. This article examines how the instrument of the cardiac catheter was used in 20th century research on the heart. The development of the domain of interventional cardiology is shown in the efforts of standardising balloon angioplasty. A special focus is given in the three studies on Werner Formann, Andr Cournand and Dickinson Richards and Andreas Grntzig to issues arising from the human being as an experimental object in medicine and to instruments as another material part in the experimental system.