Observations on fatty heart : comprising remarks on the morbid anatomy, symptoms and diagnosis, prognosis etiology and treatment, an essay / by Henry Kennedy.

  • Kennedy, Henry (Of Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale)
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on fatty heart : comprising remarks on the morbid anatomy, symptoms and diagnosis, prognosis etiology and treatment, an essay / by Henry Kennedy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    98/188 (page 86)
    8fi beat of the heart with actual organic disease of the nerves themselves. I may state that in several instances the symptom of slow pulse has grown up, if I may so express it, under my own eye, nor does it require a long time to cause it. I have seen it developed, and to a marked degree, within a year—that is, a pulse of which the habitual beat was close to 70, has fallen to 50, or even below this, remaining permanently so. The more rapidly a change of this kind occurs the more serious the case is, for it shows that the causes are being more quickly developed. I have met it both in cases of fatty growth and in those where the true degeneration existed, but I rather think the most marked examples of it occur in the latter, and more particularly Avhere the patient is thin and pale. In determining its presence we must not trust to the pulse at the wrist alone, for here there may be intermissions which are capable of leading us into error. The slow pulse, however, of fatty heart has not in my experience been usually attended by inter- missions, but simply by slowness; and I would go so far as to say that if there be intermissions the pulse rarely falls in a marked degree. Under any circum- stances the stethoscope applied over the heart must alone determine the presence or absence of slow pulse. It seems scarcely necessary to add that some parties have constitutionally a pulse below the average beat, but it is barely possible to make a mistake in a case of this kind. In connexion with slow pulse there is often, I may say always, a state which is worthy of noting—I mean what may be called sedateness. This pulse is very