In this exhibition we will explore events and meet people who have dedicated their experience, expertise, and professionalism to science. Challenging the “known” to reach the “unknown”: daring to do things that no one else had ever done before, but even more so, “thinking” in new ways about problems that had no solutions, or rather, seemed to have no possible solutions when approached in the same way as before. Courageous people, therefore.

All great innovators and discoverers of new theories, new “truths”, were courageous people that had the courage to challenge dominant intellectual conformism, the theories that tradition has mandated to follow until now, they dared to contradict an “auctoritas” that needed to be put to the test, even at the risk of being mocked and ridiculed if that ‘test’ had failed. An emblematic courageous event on the intellectual area is the discovery of the blood circulation at the beginning of the 1600 by William Harvey, a British man that graduated in the degree of Medicine in Padova: the cultural and scientific environment that was created, studying profoundly Aristotle and adopting the new experimental method from the modern Galilean science, with the new teachings that Harvey have received from great anatomists in Padova, who have been his teachers, constituted the base and the foundation to achieve that extraordinary courageous intellectual act that took to the discovery of the blood circulation inside the human body, revolutionizing the previous theories.

Therefore, there is courage at an intellectual level but also, and not least important, courage to act, when actions or procedures, for example in surgery, are carried out that have never been attempted before.

But what is courage?

A good definition of courage: it isn’t the absence of fear, but the conviction that there is something more important than the fear that pushes you to face risk without being paralyzed by the fear of failure or of not achieving the goal.

Aristotle, the great philosopher of ancient Greece, defined very clearly what “courage” is within his analysis of what “virtues” are for humans: there are ways of behaving that follow the principle of the “golden mean” between two extremes. In the case of courage, Aristotle says it is a “virtue” because it represents a “middle way” between cowardly timidity and irrational recklessness. It is, in other words, a conscious choice, made by engaging not only a “passion,” a feeling, however noble, but also “reason,” the rationality endowed to humans. The Latin word “ratio” means “calculation,” and a “courageous” action is one that faces risk after having “calculated” that the action can achieve its intended goal, even though there is no certainty that completely eliminates the risk. The decision “taken with courage” is a decision that forces to take an action that is considered necessary even if it is not free of risk, not because the risk is being ignored but because the rationality, “the science”, says us that it is not “reckless” trying to achieve the goal facing the risk that attempt holds, and, another important thing, the sense of “responsibility” says us that the goal justifies taking the risk.

This thing of the “responsibility” is an essential element in the definition of courage when we talk about the action: overall on the medical-surgery area, this element is fundamental. In the action of the surgeon there isn’t unconsciousness, but the will to cross complex barriers with prudence, experience and vision. It is “throwing the heart beyond the obstacle” not for recklessness, but for belief in science (rationality) and responsibility towards life (ethic). In the “theater” of the surgery room, between scalpels and perfused circuits, this courage becomes the fuel of action: it doesn’t challenge the unknown for vanity but navigates it with a sharp mind and a steady hand.

In the title of this exhibition, two terms, “heart” and “courage”, are brought together, not only because the occasion of its setup marks the 40th anniversary of an extraordinary and courageous act carried out by a cardiac surgeon, Vincenzo Gallucci, who on November 14, 1985, performed the first heart transplant in Italy in the Cardiac Surgery department he directed at the Policlinico of Padua. Since then, a School of Cardiac Surgery has developed in Padua, which has “courageously” faced challenges that opened new horizons for science and surgery.

But there is another reason as well: even if it is not immediately apparent to those who see the two words placed together, the term “courage” derives from the word “heart.” The two words share a common etymology, as “courage” comes from the Latin “coraticum”, a term formed by combining “cor” and “habeo”. Moreover, in everyday language, the two terms are often associated, regardless of the awareness of their common origin.