HEART DISEASE.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4058, 31 December 1881, Page 4

HEART DISEASE.

When an individual is reported to have died of disease of the heart, wearoin the habit of regarding it as an inevitable event, as something which could not have been foreseen or prevented, nnd it is too touch the habit, when persons suddenly fair down dead, to report .disease of theheart as the cause; this silences all inquiry and investigation, and saves the trouble and inconvenience of post mortem examinations. A truer report would have a tendency to save many lives. It is through a report of 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 disoaso of the heart is the unuitlc o! charity which the politic coroner and. sympathetic physician throw around thegraves of-generous people. r . , j At a scientific congress at Strasbourg it| was reported that of sixty-six persons who! had_suddenly died,van immediate and ,failbful./?o«f mortem showed that only'two persons had any heart affection whateverone 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 jof three—died, Qt 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 tor 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. '■ V.;;';-V.".'■; '.".'■; " '."':.■■.['.'; ''.... ■-',-/ Cold feet, tight shoes, light clothing, costive bowels, sitting still until chilled through after haying 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, or 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, throw people off their guard, instead of pointing to them the true causes j all of which are avoidable, and very easily so, as a general rule, when the mind has once been intelligently drawn to the subject.—From Hall's Journal of Health. '!'...,