A note on heart strain, neuroses, and muscular exercise / by F. Parkes Weber.

  • Frederick Parkes Weber
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A note on heart strain, neuroses, and muscular exercise / by F. Parkes Weber. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    By F. PARKES WEBER, M.D., F.R.C.P., Physician to the German Hospital, London. In the expression “ heart strain ” I suppose that the word “ strain ” means “ violent action,” and, probably, an excessive effort made by this muscular organ in order to do the work which is demanded of it. I take it that “ strain ” in this sense can seldom be good for the heart.* Whether it does harm or not must depend on the degree and duration of the “ strain ” and the condition (temporary or otherwise) of the individual and his heart. What is “ strain ” for one person is often an ordinary pleasurable effort for another. The least voluntary muscular exertion may be too much for the heart in some cases, as for instance in the case of a child with myocarditis from diphtheria or in a person chronically poisoned by carbon dioxide owing to laryngeal obstruction (e.g. from laryngeal oedema connected with syphilitic disease, before tracheotomy has been performed). The cardiac valves, soon after apparent recovery from an attack of acute rheumatism, may, as is well known, be in a state which renders them specially liable to damage from strain. Thus, a young member of our profession recovered from a severe illness, probably acute rheumatism, apparently without any cardiac lesion. On recovery he went in for rather violent muscular exercise (sport of some kind), and when I had to examine him, about three years later, when he was 30 years old, for life insurance (in connection witli his approaching marriage), I found the characteristic signs of well-marked aortic reflux. The aortic valves had probably been prematurely strained by the sport he indulged in after his illness. The amount or kind of exercise which constitutes “ strain ” (i.e. “ over-exercise ”) depends of course upon individual conditions. It is quite obvious, for instance, that in cases of chronic cardiac disease with commencing failure of compensation almost any muscular exertion throws a “ strain ” on the heart, but patients with ordinary compensated valvular disease react to muscular exercise, and often even to “ strain,” like ordinary healthy w Op. especially the remarks of Sir Lauder Brunton, Collected Papers on Circulation and Respiration, First series, London, p. 18.
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