Editor,—Carey Franklin Coombs, 1879–1932, was a physician at the Bristol General Hospital. He made important studies of rheumatic fever describing the diastolic murmur of acute rheumatic mitral valvulitis, which bears his name, and taking a great interest in the prevention and management of heart disease in children. His 1924 monograph Rheumatic heart diseasebecame a standard work on the subject. He also did pioneering work in coronary heart disease, and around 1910 he made a clinical diagnosis of coronary thrombosis at a time when the condition was almost unheard of. His patient survived, so without necropsy proof he did not achieve priority of recognition, which went to James Herrick of Chicago in 1912.1 His interest in the disease continued, and by 1932 he had studied and published 144 …