HEART DISEASE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 1013, 17 December 1881, Page 3

HEART DISEASE.

[From Hall’s Journal of 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, as something which could not have been foreseen or prevented, and it is too much the habit, when persons suddenly fall down dead, to report the heart as the cause ; this silences all inquiry and investigation, and saves the trouble and inconvenience of post 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 off 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 ihrow around the graves of generous people. At a scientific congress at Strasbourg it was reported that of sixty-six persons 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 apoplexy—one out of every seven ; while forty-six—more than two out of three—died of lung affection, half of them of 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 every-day causes of this congestion of the lungs, a disease which, the figures above being true, kills three times as many persons at short warning as apoplexy and heart disease together. Cold feet, tight shoes, light clothing costive bowels, sitting still until chilled through after having been warmed up by labor 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, oi' abstinence or heated by a long address ; these are the frightful causes of sudden death in the form of congestion of the lungs ; but which, being falsely reported as disease of the heart, and regarded as an inevitable event, throwing people off their guard, instead of pointing to them the true causes, all of which are avoidable ; and very easily so, as a general rule, when the mind has once been intelligently drawn on the subject.

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