A treatise on the diseases of the heart and great vessels : and on the affections which may be mistaken for them : comprising the author's view of the physiology of the heart's action and sounds, as demonstrated by his experiments on the motions and sounds in 1830, and on the sounds in 1834-5 / by J. Hope.

  • Hope, James, 1801-1841.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the diseases of the heart and great vessels : and on the affections which may be mistaken for them : comprising the author's view of the physiology of the heart's action and sounds, as demonstrated by his experiments on the motions and sounds in 1830, and on the sounds in 1834-5 / by J. Hope. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Thus it is seen that the practical improvements to be derived from a better knowledge of the diseases of the heart, extend, not to the diseases of this organ alone, but to a multitude of the most formidable maladies incident to the human frame. There is, in short, scarcely an affection with which disease of the heart may not be more or less interwoven; and if, to use the language of Senac, we would not pronounce rashly on an infinity of cases; if we would not harass our patients by noxious and un- availing remedies; if we would not accelerate death by treating certain diseases like others which are entirely different; nor be exposed to the disgrace of seeing our diagnosis falsified by the results of dissection; finally, if we would not have danger to be imminent, whilst we are under the blind impression that it is remote, we must study the diseases of the heart. Such appear to be the vacuities left by preceding writers, and such the advantages to be anticipated from their being supplied. It remains for me to explain the plan of the present work, and glance at a few particulars in its execution. The work is divided into six parts; I. The Anatomy and Physiology. II. Inflammatory affections. III. Organic affec- tions. IV. Nervous affections. V. Miscellaneous affections. VI. Cases. Although every arrangement of diseases of the heart presents considerable difficulties, and I am by no means perfectly satisfied with the one which I have adopted, it appears to me pre- ferable to others, because affections of the same class, being thrown together, by juxtaposition reflect light upon each other; nor, at the same time, are the inflammatory and the organic affections in general so intimately connected, as to render their separation impossible without doing violence to the continuity of the subject. The miscellaneous affections are ranged by them- selves, because they are not reducible to any of the preceding heads. In the execution of the work, it has constantly been my aim, the main reason why there has been, from time immemorial, so much disagreement amongst authors respecting the indications of the pulse and its value as a sign of disease.