George Ralph Mines was a pioneering

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

cardiac electrophysiologist. He made two important contributions to

cardiac electrophysiology Cardiac electrophysiology is a branch of cardiology and basic science focusing on the electrical activities of the heart. The term is usually used in clinical context, to describe studies of such phenomena by invasive (intracardiac) catheter recor ...

. First, he proposed that an action potential wave front could propagate in a circle, repeatedly activating the tissue. Second, he discovered the vulnerable period of the heart: the time during the cardiac cycle when a single stimulus can induce

ventricular fibrillation Ventricular fibrillation (V-fib or VF) is an abnormal heart rhythm in which the ventricles of the heart quiver. It is due to disorganized electrical activity. Ventricular fibrillation results in cardiac arrest with loss of consciousness and no p ...

. On November 7, 1914, Mines was found unconscious in his laboratory, and died later that day. His death may have been caused by

self-experimentation Self-experimentation refers to the special case of single-subject research in which the experimenter conducts the experiment on themselves. Usually this means that a single person is the designer, operator, subject, analyst, and user or reporter ...

using electrical stimuli. A special issue of the

Journal of Physiology ''The Journal of Physiology'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1878 and is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of The Physiological Society. It covers research on all aspects of physiology, with an emphasis ...

was published in September 2013 in honor of the 100th anniversary of Mines' most notable work and his death. The archives of physiologist Frank Campbell MacIntosh (1909-1992), held at the

Osler Library of the History of Medicine The Osler Library, a branch of the McGill University Library and part of ROAAr since 2016, is Canada's foremost scholarly resource for the history of medicine, and one of the most important libraries of its type in North America. It is located i ...

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

, contain a dossier on Mines assembled by Dr. MacIntosh from 1982-1986 including publications, photographs, obituaries, and autopsy information on Mines, as well as correspondence regarding his death and a copy of "The short brilliant career and strange death of G.R. Mines," written by MacIntosh in 1985.

References

External links

Frank Campbell MacIntosh Fonds

.
George Ralph Mines archival photographs
held at th
University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mines, George Ralph 1886 births 1914 deaths Cardiac electrophysiologists