In 1929, a young surgical resident, Werner Forssmann, made an incision into his antecubital vein and fed a catheter into the right atrium of his own heart. A risky but successful experiment, which made it possible to improve the diagnosis of heart diseases and paved the way to other spectacular firsts, such as the first open-heart operations in 1944, implantation of a silicon heart valve prosthesis in 1960, heart transplantation in 1967...