Matthew Baillie Gairdner, The Royal Medical Society and the problem of the second heart sound.

In 1830, Matthew Baille Gairdner (1808-88) was the first to propose that the second heart sound was produced by the closure of the semilunar valves. He proposed this theory, while a student at Edinburgh University, in an oral presentation to the Royal Medical Society (RMS). Gairdner (Figure 1) has been largely ignored by both nineteenth and twentieth century historians of cardiology. This paper presents an account of his life, his discovery and the scientific controversy to which he contributed, and argues that an appreciation of his work and that of his student colleagues should cause us to re-evaluate the significance of the RMS as a research forum in the early nineteenth century. Suggestions are made as to why his contribution to our understanding of the heart sounds has been neglected.