Heart hurry : a clinical study / by Edward Blake.

  • Blake, Edward T. (Edward Thomas), 1842-1905.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Heart hurry : a clinical study / by Edward Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Rate. Quickening and Blowing. The latter of these disturbances of rate in the heart’s action, is by far the more important of the two from a clinical point of view. Nevertheless, for various reasons, the former will chiefly occupy our attention at present. Heart-hurry. By acceleration of the heart, or “ heart-hurry,” is meant a persistent increase of the pulse above 80 in a woman, well above 70 beats per minute in a man, and above 90 in a child. Heart-hurry is divided into three kinds; they are tachy¬ cardia, palpitation and tremor cordis. Tachycardia. The term “ tachycardia ” is not in itself a very beautiful word, neither is it very accurate. Polycardia is better. “Tachycardia” was introduced by Proebsting, a pupil of Gerhardt, in 1881; it has “caught on” and must now be accepted as a convenient, if not a classic, piece of ter¬ minology. In tachycardia the heart seeks to atone by rapidity, for what it lacks in force. Temporary tachycardia is not in itself a disease. It is caused by exertion in the young and in the aged; in early life too most of the emotions are associated with increased action of the heart. One most important feature which serves to distinguish between the various forms of cardiac hastening, is that the subject of tachycardia is not conscious of its existence. In this condition, the movements of the heart, in some respects, resemble those of the voluntary muscles of the foetus, before the stage of quickening. If excited to sudden action during the first four months of intra-uterine life, the movements of the child do not produce any impression on the sensory nerves distributed to the parietes of the mother.