Arhythmia [sic] of the heart : a physiological and clinical study / by K.F. Wenchkebach ; tr. by Thos. Snowball.

  • Karel Frederik Wenckebach
Date:
1904
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Arhythmia [sic] of the heart : a physiological and clinical study / by K.F. Wenchkebach ; tr. by Thos. Snowball. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    narrow bridge of muscle ; this thin bridge conducted the stimulus at a distinctly slower rate. During systole the conductivity is temporarily destroyed, but it returns gradually again after each contraction. This fact affords an additional proof of the theory that those particles with which this function is connected, are also located in the muscle cells themselves and not in nerve fibres lying outside them. One would fain assume that a process is at work here similar to that which could be assumed in the production of the stimulus, viz., a dissociation into ions that have an effect on the conduction, which would be destroyed by the systole and necessarily restored again after it. In a recent paper, Gothlin (3,) has made an attempt to trace the conduction of the stimulus in a living frog’s heart, as well as the movement itself, to the action of certain ions. To go more fully into the discussion of this explanation, which involves a study of physical chemistry, would take us too far, and, moreover, the subject has hardly yet received sufficient proof to warrant it. But that we may possibly find the explanation of these various processes in the heart in this direction is most plainly indicated by the interesting researches of Loeb, Gothlin, and others (cf. Biedermann in Ergebnisse dev Physio- logic). Further details of stimulus-conduction in the heart will be fully dealt with again as well as in the chapter on the dis- turbances of stimulus-conduction. § 7. Mutual Independence of the Various Properties of Cardiac Muscle.—From what has been said it follows that the cells of cardiac muscle possess not only the properties of excitability and con- tractility which they have in common with voluntary muscles, but also those of stimulus-production and stimulus-conduction. The part which these various properties take in the action of the heart and their relation to each other form an extremely difficult, but very interesting, chapter in the physiology of the heart, and cannot but be regarded as highly important for an insight into the patho- logical disturbances of the cardiac functions. From the large number of facts that have been discovered about these properties of cardiac muscle it seems possible that a fuller knowledge of these pathological changes shall yet be obtained. For further investigation into these functions it is of the highest importance to know that they are all independent of one another, so that it may happen that one property may even be absent altogether while another is present and greatly increased.