Diseases of the heart and arterial system : Designed to be a practical presentation of the subject for the use of students and practitioners of medicine.
- Babcock, Robert H. (Robert Hall), 1851-1930
- Date:
- 1910
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Diseases of the heart and arterial system : Designed to be a practical presentation of the subject for the use of students and practitioners of medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![tlienia accoinpanicd by mild fever, these symptoms having been preceded by follicular tonsillitis. There are no constant time relations, moreover, between an attack of rheumatism and inflammation of the pericardium. The latter may even precede the former, although it most commonly develops during or after the rheumatism. It generally makes its appearance from the fourth to the sixth day of the rheumatic dis- order, sometimes not before the tenth or lifteenth day, and has even been known by Sibson to be postponed as long as the sixty- third day. Rheumatic pericarditis may exceptionally attack in- dividuals of all ages, but is undeniably most frequent in young adults who have been rendered susceptible to it by hard work or exposure. In England it appears to be particularly prevalent among young servant-girls below the age of twenty-one (Sibson), and among persons of both sexes thus afflicted at a later age, the majority were found by the same author t« follow more or less laborious outdoor occupations. Its ])revalence among children is shown by statistics gathered from children's hospitals by Sturgcs and Poynton. Yet Roberts states that, according to his experience, pericarditis is very much less frequent in children of the better classes, a fact which, he be- lieves, shows the predisposing influence of hardship, not alone in the production of rheumatism, but also in the development of peri- carditis. Satisfactory evidence of the infectious nature of the rheumatic poison has not yet been adduced, although many observers have expressed the belief that the pathogenic organism will yet be dis- covered. If such an organism should one day be identified, then pericarditis would no longer be considered a complication, but a natui-al thougli not a necessary part of the pathological process of iiilhiiiiiiiatoi'v rhcuuuitisui. Nephritis.—The importance attached to renal disease in tlie production of acute pericarditis is scarcely appreciated, I think, by the majority of physicians. A few writers of wide clinical experience place nephritis as only second in this regard to inflam- matory rheuinatisui. It should, however, yiehl ])lace to acute ])neunionia in this regard. The |)ericardial inllauiiuation is not limited to acute ncjjliritis, as might be su])]>osed, from the fact that the latter is so frequently observed in the course of acute infec-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21229533_0068.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
