Heartbeat Is Sweet Music -- Johnnie L. Bridges (Above) of Bessemer, ALA.. listens with visible delight to the thumping of his own heartbeat in the Kennedy Veterans Hospital here his life had been saved by doctors who performed a delicate operation on his heart Dr. Felix Hughes, Chief of Thoracic Surgery at Kennedy, said he had to lay open Bridges' chest, hold the heart in his land and peel it like an orange. The young veteran was suffering from restrictive pericarditis and would have dies a lingering, unhappy and certain death." June 27, 1947. (Photo by AP Wirephoto).