Abstract: In 1986, Murray built upon a se- ries of accumulated works to demonstrated that brief ischemic “training” episodes fortified cardiac tissue against impending prolonged infarction (Murry et al., 1986). This discovery altered the dogmatic understanding of ischemia, highlighting that time-dependent tissue compromise during infarction was bimodal, not linear, in nature. Instead of being invariably deleterious, an organ’s response to ischemia is dependent upon both the duration of the infarction as well as adaptions from previous, transient isch- emic episodes.