Gustav Mahler and Emanuel Libman: bacterial endocarditis in 1911.

was diagnosed definitively by Emanuel Libman (1872-1946) and his assistant, George Baehr (1887-1978), who at the time, together with William Osler and Thomas Horder in England, were the world's greatest authorities on endocarditis. In 1983 I initiated a search for the detailed bacteriological records known to have been kept by Dr Baehr. Dr ArnoldM Weissler, of Denver, Colorado, traced them to the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, through Dr George L Engel, nephew of Dr Libman, and Dr Manfred Waserman, formerly of the National Library of Medicine. The records, from the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, had been deposited there after Dr Libman's death. I present them here in relation to some of the biographical and clinical details of Mahler's illness and to the state of knowledge of bacterial endocarditis in 1911, a time when many of the outstanding problems of the disease were being solved.