[The long way toward Mexican cardiology].

The evolution of medical thought from the precientific phase during Renaissance toward the beginning of scientific phase in the XVII Century is reviewed. This phase was dominated by the great event of the discovery of blood circulation. The irradiation of this doctrine was parallel to that of Copernican theory. Harvey, the starter of experimental method in medicine, graduated at the University of Padua, where previously studied Copernicus. There he was influenced by Galileo's teaching, from whom adopted the quantitative focussing for his physiological research. His monograph Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis... was present in Mexico, although it is not possible to establish when it arrived here. Only in the physiological treatise of doctor Marcos Joseph Salgado (1727) the blood circulation is described following Harvey's doctrine. Studies in the cardiovascular field began here during French intervention at the same time of the development of our Academy of Medicine. The first observations, concerning the blood vessels, were of surgical interest. Between 1870 and 1900, around 30 thesis related to cardiovascular system were presented at Mexican Medical School and various books related to this field were published. At the end of XIX century and in the beginning of the XX, some cardiovascular pharmacological investigations were done at the National Medical Institute under the direction of Dr. Fernando Altamirano. However only toward the middle of XX century it was possible to create and sistematize a cardiological specialty, thanks to the foresight of Dr. Ignacio Chávez. Cardiology today constitutes a mother discipline fragmented in a great number of subspecialities, each one having own characteristics, methodology and focussing.