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The conventional history of paediatric cardiology teaches that it was Helen Taussig who founded the cardiac clinic for children at the Harriet Lane Home of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1930, when Edwards Park appointed her director of the clinic.1,2 However, the story was more complex than that, and involved the collaboration of institutions and the frustrations, doubts, and passions of both Park and Taussig. In this article, I explore the history in more depth through published works, and material preserved at the McGill University Archives, the Rockefeller Foundation Archives, and the Alan Chesney Medical Archives at Johns Hopkins.

Few paediatric cardiologists know of Maude Abbott. Yet before Helen Taussig, no one contributed more to founding the specialty than Maude Abbott. She achieved international fame as the early 20th century expert on cardiac malformations. We summarise here her life and contributions, indicating how she is more than justified in being inducted to the Hall of Fame.

The history of Helen Taussig is well known. Contrary to popular belief, however, she was not the first director of the pediatric cardiology clinic at the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children. She was second director, succeeding Clifton B. Leech. Edwards A. Park, Chief of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins, appointed Leech the first director of the pediatric cardiac clinic in the fall of 1928. In this vignette, I summarize the contributions of Clifton Leech to the development of paediatric cardiology.

Attempts at the arterial switch operation predated the Senning and the Mustard venous switch procedures. No patients survived the earlier arterial switch methods. Therefore, from the 1960s to the 1980s, venous switch surgeries became the dominant treatment method for transposition of the great arteries. The Brazilian cardiac surgeon, Adib Jatene, reported the first successful arterial switch in 1975. The history of the earlier arterial switches performed in the 1950s and 1960s is not well known. This article discusses that early history.

Before paediatric cardiology emerged as a specialty in the mid 20th century, a body of literature had developed over centuries devoted to description of congenitally malformed hearts. In this review, we have selected highlights from such texts written during the period of 100 years from 1814 to 1914, demonstrating their potential relevance to controversies occurring during the twentieth century in the categorisation of such hearts. We begin in 1814, with the first wide-ranging book devoted to congenital cardiac malformations. We end with a publication from 1914, because it included an illustration of the first electrocardiogram in a text devoted to paediatric disease. As we will show, these works from the 19th and early 20th centuries reflect topics still relevant today, namely the aetiology of cardiac malformations, clinicopathologic correlations, attempts at classification, and lack of effective treatments. Attention to their content could have served to ameliorate controversies, some of them ongoing.

The literature has scant documentation of the relationship between the important founders of paediatric cardiology, Maude Abbott and Helen Taussig. Recently discovered entries in the diaries kept by Maude Abbott provide evidence for a close connection between them. Further evidence suggests that their association was complex, and influenced by outside factors, such as their difference in age and era-related notoriety. In this review, I attempt to define more clearly the relationship between these two early icons of paediatric cardiology.