Identification of the sickle-cell type of anemia.

"This case is reported because of the unusual blood findings, no duplicate of which I have ever seen described. Whether the blood picture represents merely a freakish poikilocytosis or is dependent on some peculiar physical or chemical condition of the blood, or is characteristic of some particular disease, I cannot at present answer. I report some details that may seem non-essential, thinking that if a similar blood condition is found in some other case a comparison of clinical conditions may help in solving the problem."

Outstanding description of coronary thrombosis. Herrick was the first to describe and diagnose coronary thrombosis in a living person; he showed that sudden coronary occlusion is not necessarily fatal. Reprint in Willius & Keys, Cardiac classics, 1941, pp. 817-29.

"...includes electrocardiographic tracings of a 42-year-old physician who died "after coronary obstructive symptoms" and of a dog following experimental ligation of a coronary artery. This finding "led Herrick to conclude that coronary occlusion might be accompanied by characteristic electrocardiographic changes that would help physicians recognize coronary thrombosis. Thus, Herrick provided clinicians with both an intellectual framework for conceptualizing survival after coronary thrombosis and a new diagnostic approach [electrocardiography] to help them recognize this event" (W. Bruce Fye, "Acute myocardial infaction: A historical summary," 1990).