The Deadliest Disease.

Half of all American deaths were caused by cardiovascular disease in the 1950s. Though that statistic has not changed significantly in recent decades, it seemed during the first half of the century that every year there were more people complaining of heart ailments and more people dying from them. In fact, the increase was probably a result of better diagnosis. Doctors knew far more about the heart in 1950 than they did in 1900. Like the other major diseases, heart disease attracted unprecedented attention from medical researchers during the 1950s. When President Eisenhower was struck by a heart attack in 1955, the nation's attention was focused sharply.

Experimentation and Discovery.

An American reading a newspaper in the early 1950s could only have shaken his head incredulously at the fantastic news about the work of cardiologists and heart surgeons. In Philadelphia an eleven-year-old girl was...