The 1961 'History of Thoracic Surgery' by Richard Meade will always remain the classic reference document for future scholars of our history. Very little can be added to this author's monumental 900 pages of meticulous historical research. My own 1990 'Story of Thoracic Surgery' told 30 years or two generations later, literally reports the story in an abridged, more personal manner. Unfortunately both books are out of print. Several more recent autobiographical accounts may become of interest to future historians, but essentially add very little to the knowledge about a surgical field born after the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. I therefore could have abstained from writing one more story about a very well-documented evolution, except for the desire to describe what was in fact 'the real mid-century revolution of cardio-thoracic surgery' . At the same time I wanted to evoke this fascinating story as a personal experience, possibly meaningful for future historians and surgeons. The recent death, on July 21, 2000 of Ake Senning (Fig. 1), one of the outstanding pioneers in European cardio-thoracic surgery, or the tragic suicide in Buenos Aires, on Saturday July 29, 2000 of Rene Favarolo (Fig. 2), the first to establish aorto-coronary bypass surgery in 1967, reminds us that the generation of pioneers who actually were active witnesses of this revolution is rapidly disappearing and that it may be high time to recapture, as an active participant, the birth of modern thoracic and cardiovascular surgery during the three or four mid-century decades from 1940 to 1960.
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