Otto Frank and Ernest Starling are generally credited with the discovery that diastolic fiber length modifies the ability of the heart to perform work. Because Frank (Figure 1) published his work in 1895,1 almost 20 years before Starling,2-5 it is often assumed that the latter simply built upon Frank’s data and concepts. Chapman and Wasserman, who translated Frank’s seminal paper,6 wrote: “… one must acknowledge the justice in Wezler’s7 recent remark ‘The so-called Law of the Heart,’ which Starling rediscovered ten years later [than Frank]… is implicit in Frank’s work on cardiac dynamics.’” It can be argued, however, that although both made significant contributions, their work represented steps along a line of research that had begun decades before...