On strain and over-action of the heart / by J.M. Da Costa.

  • Da Costa, J. M. (Jacob Mendes), 1833-1900.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On strain and over-action of the heart / by J.M. Da Costa. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    absent, and on the spur of the moment she started, with one child in her arm, and leading another by the hand, across the fields and over fences to the nearest neighbor, a distance of about one-quarter of a mile. Her previous health had been excellent, but after this perilous night journey she began to be troubled with shortness of breath and severe beating in her chest. The physical signs of an aneurism of the aorta grad- ually became evident, and she died a few months since by the external rupture of an aneurism which had corroded the sternum.* This case cannot, perhaps, be adduced as a pure one of mere agitation and fright leading to rent or injury, since it is possi- ble that the violent exertion in carrying her children may have led to the accident. But even if it did so, it happened when she was previously much excited, and the alarm continued during her flight. In the instance I am about to detail to you there was no severe muscular effort that accompanied the nervous shock:— Some j'ears since a blooming girl of eighteen was brought to my office by her mother, to consult me with reference to palpi- tation and shortness of breath on exertion, which had developed themselves suddenly. I found a well-marked aortic, regurgitant lesion. She never had had rheumatism, had been, indeed, in perfect health until a certain day, and had been remarkable for the ease and endurance with which she rode and walked long distances. But one night—it was in the midst of the trouble- some times in the border States during the civil war—while she and her mother were alone in the house, which stood some distance from any neighbor's, and the father was known to be far away with the army, two men entered the dwelling, and, notwithstanding the entreaty of the mother, slowly ascended the * The case will be reported in full in the October number of the American Journal of the Medical Sciences by my late clinical assistant, Dr. Webb.