Deaths from heart disease have fallen from their peak in the 1950s, thanks to the development of more effective imaging and treatments. Still, even at the peak of the Covid pandemic, heart disease remained the leading cause of death in the U.S., as it has been for more than a century. Worldwide, 6.3 million people died from Covid by July 2022, while 18 million people died from cardiovascular disease in 2021 alone. This discovery was dramatically confirmed in 1641, when Harvey met a young Irish nobleman named Hugh Montgomery. The wound abscessed and healed, leaving a hole in the boy’s chest through which his beating heart was visible.

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