Reminiscences of Vasilii I. Kolesov.

Vasilii I. Kolesov (1904-1992) as a military surgeon during the Siege of St. Petersburg (1941-1944) treated countless war casualties, and after the Siege, he also attended many survivors who suffered from coronary artery disease. It was probably this second mission that led him on February 25, 1964, to anastomose the left internal thoracic artery to a coronary. That operation ushered a new era in the modern treatment of coronary artery disease.