[Internal medicine and cardiology, internists and cardiologists].

A retrospective on the development of internal medicine as a base from which other specific fields of medicine, including cardiology as one of the largest, branched as consequence of technological progress and transformation from an empirical to a scientific discipline. Similar to the internal medicine tree, cardiology also branches into a number of subspecialities. This is because no one human brain has a capacity to remember and know everything. This has also resulted in a segregation of the operational curricula of internal medicine physicians and cardiologists. However, a close collaboration of all the disciplines is essential as it is the very same patient who is the focus of them all.