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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    Medical students exhausted by a winter session are apt to be special subjects of real or fancied irregularity of the heart. We have fre- quently to assure our young studious friends that their hearts are cer- tainly in the right place, and gravely prescribe a vacation. Bouillaud slyly alludes to this as a distinct species, under the name of Maladie du Cceur des Etttdiants. We remember an early friend who, with the writer and two or three other students, gravely flourished the stethoscope over each other as a sort of society of mutual observation. We fancy we see still the dole- ful expression of his pale, handsome face, at the spring of the gushing cups over his intermitting rebellious heart. He soon after grew stout and forgot his heart in a successful country practice. A young friend, attending our Lectures on Diseases of the Chest last winter, felt an un- usual knocking of his heart after ascending the long college stairs, and required several examinations to satisfy him. An early fellow-student (who happened to come to light again after illness and a hard session), in mounting to one of the sky apartments of a Parisian hotel, used fre- quently in alarm to call the writer to examine his palpitating irritable heart, and recovered under the somewhat selfish prescription of a par- tially pedestrian tour with his adviser to the south. Anemic Irritation of the Heart. The reaction from sudden hemor- rhage or excessive venesection, so well described by Marshall Hall, is sometimes characterized by palpitation, distress, a smart knocking impulse of the heart and bellows murmur, with a quick jerking and occasionally intermittent pulse, thrill of the arteries, nervous panting and sense of wildness and pain in the head. In the case of a middle-aged sanguine, nervous lady, under our care in 1849, who had been very largely bled in severe puerperal peritonitis, this mingling of heart and head symptoms suddenly assumed a very per- plexing character; and with serious misgivings, as, to whether the lancet was not farther required, she was fortunately partially nar- cotized with opiates, and the palpitation and distress at the heart soon ceased. A boarding mistress is mentioned by Morgani, who, for palpita- tion of the heart, was bled, with temporary relief, followed by great aggravation. The breast seemed at every stroke to be lifted up, and the venesections were repeated, till by degrees she was, as the event proved, literally bled to death; for, on the post-mortem examination, not the slightest change in the heart or viscera could be detected. Everything was entire, sound and natural. In Chlorosis, especially in the more excitable of its delicate sub-