Skip to main content
Historical Bibliography Updated: January 24, 2020

Traité nouveau de la structure et des causes du mouvement naturel du coeur. IN: Oeuvres françoises de M. Vieussens dédiées a nosseigneurs des états de la province de Languedoc.

Publication Details

Toulouse: Jean Guillemette, 1715 CE.

The first work on cardiac anatomy and pathology. Vieussens was the first to describe the course of the coronary arteries and the coronary sinus. He also described collateral vessels connecting the left anterior descending artery and the right coronary artery (circle of Vieussens), the valve Vieussens situated at the junction of the great cardiac vein and coronary sinus ostium, and a depression at the margin of the fossa ovalis called Vieussens' annulus. Vieussens provided several illustrations demonstrating the arterial andvenous coronary circulation (plates 1 to 6). He also described in detail the organization of myocardial fibers of the right and left ventricles (plates 7 to 9) Similar to Lower, Vieussens reported cases of pericardial effusion and restrictive pericarditis ("symphyse pericardique"). He presented  the clinical manifestations associated with these diseases, and described one of the first cases of aortic regurgitation. Vieussens also discussed "the structure of the internal surface of the right ventricle." He provided a detailed description of the structural and functional anatomy of the tricuspid and pulmonic valves (pp. 98-101; plates 10 & 11). Vieussens also provided the first comprehensive description of mitral stenosis (pp 101-106; plates 12 & 13). (This note was adapted from information provided by Farzan Filsoufi.) Digital facsimile from HathiTrust at this link.

Catalog MetadataReference Information
Entry Number#7247
Permanent Linkhttps://staging.historyofmedicine.com/entry/9416
Author Bio LinkWikipedia ↗
External URLtrait-nouveau-der-la-strcture-et-des-causes-du-mouvement-naturel-du-coeur

Geographic Context

Publication place: Toulouse