Leo Schamroth: his contributions to clinical electrocardiography

SUMMARY: Leo Schamroth (1924–1988) was one of the best-known South Africans in the international medical community. His book, An Introduction to Electrocardiography, first published in 1957, was my introduction to the mysteries of the ECG. The first edition was only 90 pages and was a model of clarity and simplicity, with remarkable insight into the needs of a student new to the subject. It has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, Turkish and Japanese, and is said to be the book most often stolen from medical libraries worldwide.1 Schamroth was a superb teacher, not only of the ECG, and will be remembered by generations of students who passed through his hands during his tenure at the Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital from 1956 to 1987, occupying the Chair of Medicine there from 1972. As a lecturer who combined unrivalled clarity with showmanship, he held his audiences, at home and all over the world, spellbound. However, it was his ability to wring insights from the most ordinary-appearing ECG, by painstaking analysis, that is his enduring legacy.