HEART DISEASE.

Kumara Times, Issue 1544, 8 September 1881, Page 2

HEART DISEASE.

[FROM HAIL'S JoTJHNTAJi OP HEALTH}

When an individual is reported to have died of disease of the heart, we are in the habit of regarding it as an inevitable event, which could not have been foraeen or prevented, and it is too much the habit, when persons suddenly fall down dead, to report the heart as the cause j this silences all inquiry and investigation, and saves the trouble and inconvenience of po3t mortem. A truer report would have a tendency to save many lives. It is through a report of the disease of the heart that many an opium-eater is let oft into the grave, which covers at once his folly and his crime ; the brandy drinker, too, quietly slides around the corner thus, and is heard of no more ; in short, this report of disease of the heart is the mantle of charity which the politic coroner and sympathetic physician throw around the graves of generous people.

At a scientific congress at Strasbourg it was reported that of sixty-six persous who had suddenly died, an immediate and faithful post mortem showed that* only two persons had any heart affection whatever—one sudden death only in thirty-three, from diseases of the heart. Nine out of sixty died of one out of every seven; while forty* six—,more than two ont of three—died of luug affection, half of them congestion of the lungs, that is, the lungs were so full of blood they could not work; there* was not room enough for air to get in to support life. It is then of considerable practical interest to know some of the common eyery-day causes of this congestion of the luugs, a disease which, the figures above, being true, kills three times as many persons at short warning as apoplexy and heart disease to-

gether. "--• Cold feet, tight shoes/light elothing, costive bowels, sitting still until'chilled through after having -been warmed '"up by labour or a long, hasty walk; going too suddenly from a close heated room, as a lounger or,listener, or,speaker, while the body is weakened by' continued application, or abstinence, oi* heated by a long address; these are the frightful causes of, sudden death in the form of congpstipn of the lungs; but which, being falsely reported as disease of the heart, and regarded as an inevitable event, throw people off their guard, instead of pointing them to t the true causes, all of which aire avoidable i and very easily so, as a general rule, when the mind has once been intelli* gently drawn on the subject.'