December 29th
Born 29 Dec 1863; died 10 Nov 1934 at age 70.
A Swiss cardiologist who fully described the group of modified muscle fibers (known as the bundle of His) that form part of the heart`s impulse conduction system in 1893. (First noticed by Stanley Kent in 1892.) It runs as a single bundle from the atrioventricular node (between the atrioventricular and ventricle) and then diverges in the path to the right and left ventricles. It transmits electrical impulses and creates a single rhythm of contraction through the heart. He was one of the first to recognize that the heartbeat came from individual cells of the heart muscle. During World War I, he served as a consultant physician in several armies. In 1916 he described trench fever in Volchnia, Russia. His father of the same name was a famous anatomist.
