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Page: History
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Because the diagnosis of atrial fibrillation requires measurement of the electrical activity of the heart, atrial fibrillation was not truly described until 1874, when Edme' Fe'lix Alfred Vulpian observed the irregular atrial electrical behavior that he termed "fremissement fibrillaire" in dog hearts. However, the irregular pulse and its association with disease have been recognized since antiquity. Direct visualization of cardiac fibrillation was first described in 1628 by William Harvey in dying animals. In the mid-eighteenth century, Jean Baptiste de Se'nac made note of dilated, irritated atria in people with mitral stenosis. The irregular pulse associated with AF was first recorded in 1876 by Carl Wilhelm Hermann Nothnagel and termed "delirium cordis" stating, "In this form of arrhythmia the heartbeats follow each other in complete irregularity. At the same time, the height and tension of the individual pulse waves are continuously changing." Correlation of delirium cordis with the loss of atrial contraction as reflected in the loss of a waves in the jugular venous pulse was made by Sir James MacKenzie in 1904. Willem Einthoven published the first electrocardiogram showing AF in 1906. The connection between the anatomic and electrical manifestations of AF and the irregular pulse of delirium cordis was made in 1909 by Carl Julius Rothberger, Heinrich Winterberg, and Sir Thomas Lewis.
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