Charles Kaye Friedberg (1905–1972) was an American cardiologist, known for his medical textbook Diseases of the Heart, which was a standard reference in cardiology during the 1950s and 1960s.
[2]An acknowledged expert in the recognition and management of subacute bacterial endocarditis, and coauthor with Emanuel Libman of the classic monograph on the topic in 1941, his diagnostic dictum has helped guide several generations of physicians: “The diagnosis of subacute bacterial endocarditis should be assumed as most probable whenever a patient with an organic cardiac murmur experiences fever, without apparent cause, for more than one week” (Friedberg, 1949, p.
[1] He was appointed editor-in-chief of the American Heart Association's journal Circulation, for a six-year term that started in January 1971, as successor to Howard B. Burchell[7] (1908–2009).
[2] According to the cardiologist Eugene Braunwald, Charles K. Friedburg was one of a small group of outstanding pioneers of cardiology as practiced in the era of medicine from the 1940s to the early 1970s; according to Braunwald the other pioneers included Charles Laubry, Samuel A. Levine, Thomas Lewis, James Mackenzie, John Parkinson, Paul Dudley White, and Paul Hamilton Wood.
The new model for textbooks would be one in which editors sought numerous experts to write chapters on specific topics, and tried to impose a consistent style and philosophy on the submitted materials.