Functional and sympathetic affections of the heart : a paper read before the Society of Statistical Medicine / by John W. Corson ; from the New-York journal of medicine for January, 1854.

  • Corson, John W.
Date:
1854
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Functional and sympathetic affections of the heart : a paper read before the Society of Statistical Medicine / by John W. Corson ; from the New-York journal of medicine for January, 1854. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    fecting the heart, the winner of a rich prize in a lottery, a feeble Em- peror of Morocco in gaining a desperate victory, and a fond Russian mother in the restoration of her captive son, all died of the joyful news. John Hunter expired of disease of the heart in a fit of anger. The wife of a farmer, long harrassed with the fear of incendiaries; a nurse, from continued anxious watching; and a lady, tortured for a week with danger of shipwreck; each suffered afterwards from pro- tracted disorder of the heart! A patient of the writer, disconsolate at the loss of her broken-hearted daughter, whose case will be mentioned, died of dilatation of the heart a few months afterwards. Exhausting Mental Application is the frequent cause of irritation and palpitation of the heart. A friend, distinguished as a divine and author, aged about 42. moderately full, after several years' severe appli- cation, in which he habitually studied till three or four o'clock in the morning, was at last greatly incapacitated for a long period by irri- table palpitation of the heart. He was most relieved by a succession of blisters, the size of a twenty-five cent piece, over the heart, and rest, with tonics, and at length nearly restored by a tour in Europe, mental relaxation and more generous diet. Any great mental effort, however, still exhausts his stock of nervous energy, and brings on irritability of the heart. A celebrated Methodist clergyman, of middle age,—as a Western medical friend recently informed me, having,—by protracted and severe studies, brought on irregularity of the heart, was sentenced to suspen- sion, and patient waiting for sudden death from organic disease, by the most celebrated medical professors of a Western school. In his retire- ment, he was surprised by the opinion of a shrewd country physician, that it was merely functional, and that he might with proper treatment gradually resume active labor; and finding, by a little experience, the last opinion correct, in a few months after he accepted the highest office in his church. He has since labored several years as Bishop. It would seem as if the study of certain diseases sometimes favored their real or imaginary development. Lacnnec died of pthisis, and Corvisart of disease of the heart. When the celebrated Professor Frank was preparing his lectures on disease of the heart at Pavia, his own heart became so disturbed that he was obliged to rest for a time.* Rumor says that no less than five of the Professors in one of the me- dical colleges of this city have unjustly suspected their hearts. Romberg.