Pathfinders of the Heart

About the Book

Seventy-five years ago, in the midst of the Great Depression, the Cleveland Clinic launched a new department, Cardiorespiratory Disease. With the refinement of specialties in American medicine it became known as the Department of Cardiology. This is a story about its people. Leaders with imagination and wisdom who created an extraordinary enterprise in cardiology and a unique partnership with cardiac surgery that succeeded despite the challenges and conflicts. It is also the story of the workers who shouldered the burden, and the organization that provided the supportive environment.

About the Author

About the Author William C. Sheldon’s career at the Cleveland Clinic spanned forty-seven years, during which he was Chairman of Cardiology for sixteen. For the past ten years, in retirement, he remains a close, not entirely disinterested observer.He witnessed or participated in many of the events described in this monograph; what he didn’t witness he was given first-person descriptions by those who did – two close friends, William L. Proudfit and Earl K. Shirey. Born in a small Wisconsin dairy town of a country lawyer and former nurse, Sheldon received his undergraduate and medical degrees at Northwestern University, in Evanston and Chicago. After an Internship at Northwestern’s Passavant Memorial Hospital he and Margaret were married. Completing a residency in Internal Medicine in 1960 at Northwestern’s V.A. Research Hospital in Chicago, he moved to Cleveland with his young family, ostensibly to specialize in Hypertension. But his first assignment, in the laboratory of F. Mason Sones, Jr., was a life changing experience. Now, from the perspective of an Emeritus Staff member, he describes the unique evolution of a Department in an era of relentless change in medicine, and how it came to be the nation’s No. 1 program.