Throughout the centuries and in various cultures, authors have described a relationship between emotional states and heart functioning, colloquially called a “broken heart.” Similarly, the medical literature is filled with reports of stress-induced cardiac disorders, including sudden cardiac death. Initially called “human stress cardiomyopathy syndrome,” the phenomenon was first described by doctors reporting “extensive myocardial contraction band necrosis” found in a series of murder victims who had been emotionally and physically traumatized prior to their deaths. Pathology reports described the myocardial damage to have been “comparable to lesions described in stressed animal experiments” and suggested that their findings were “strongly supportive of the theory of catecholamine mediation of these myocardial changes in man and of the lethal potential of stress through its effect on the heart.”