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Previous Volume 355:1412-1414 October 5, 2006 Number 14 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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Today, there is talk about an epidemic of atrial fibrillation, and physicians caring for patients with this common arrhythmia face a bewildering array of treatment options. Contrast this situation with that of 1900, when no one understood the arrhythmia's mechanism or realized that it occurred in humans. One hundred years ago, in 1906, two publications — one from the Netherlands and the other from the United States — revealed that the arrhythmia, then called "auricular fibrillation," did indeed affect humans, that it was in fact common in patients with heart disease, and that it could be identified by means of . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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Dr. Fye is a professor of medicine and the history of medicine and the director of the Mayo Clinic Center for the History of Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN.

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Fatkin, D., Otway, R., Vandenberg, J. I. (2007). Genes and Atrial Fibrillation: A New Look at an Old Problem. Circulation 116: 782-792 [Full Text]  
• Villa, E., Messina, A., Cirillo, M., Troise, G. (2007). Size matters in atrial fibrillation surgery. Eur. J. Cardiothorac. Surg. 32: 398-399 [Full Text]