The soldier's heart and the effort syndrome / by Sir Thomas Lewis.

  • Lewis, Thomas, Sir, 1881-1945.
Date:
1940
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The soldier's heart and the effort syndrome / by Sir Thomas Lewis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    These types of giddiness have little or no prognostic value. In patients who complain persistently of giddiness, the effects of simple tests, such as quick change of posture, - should be observed. Giddiness of the same types is not infrequent in cases of early structural heart disease, such as mitral stenosis and aortic valve lesions. Headache. Headache, frontal and throbbing, and often severe enough to send a man voluntarily to bed, is not uncommon. It is usually an after-symptom of exercise. Sweating and other peripheral phenomena. Excessive sweating is frequent and at times leads to complaint. It is frequently to be noticed in the palms of the hands while the patients are at rest, and it is a common experience to note sweat drops trickling from the axillae, while patients stand stripped in a cool or cold room. Relatively mild stimuli, such as easy exercise or emotion, may produce conspicuous sweating of the forehead and body ; in some patients a bedewed brow is almost constant, in a number the skin is greasy or moist. In a few patients the hands stream with perspiration during emotion and are always wet. Such soldiers complain that the sweat constantly rusts their rifles. Not uncommonly there are other peripheral phenomena in the same class of patient. One of the most noteworthy of these is blueness or mottled colouring of the hands. It is present in a large proportion of the patients and is associated with coldness of the extremities. Dermatographism, simple > or urticarial, is common. Attacks of pallor of the fingers 3 accompanied by numbness and by pain are not rare. In a