The nervous affections of the heart : being the Morison lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1902 and 1903 / by George Alexander Gibson.

  • Gibson, George Alexander, 1854-1913.
Date:
1905
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The nervous affections of the heart : being the Morison lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1902 and 1903 / by George Alexander Gibson. 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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    symptoms as well as in his narrative of two cases, and Hoffmann shortly afterwards placed on record an undoubted case of angina pectorisd This brings us down to the well-known instance of the patient described by Morgagni,^ who died at the age of 42, in the year 1707. The characteristic distribution of cardiac pain, the sudden termination of life during a paroxysm, and the discovery of aortic lesions at the subsequent post-mortem examination, render this case the first serious contribution to the subject. Time will not permit me to dwell upon the claim of modern French authors on behalf of Eougnon® as the original observer of angina pectoris. His work has been very fully analysed by me elsewhere.^ It is perfectly true that he describes pain in the anterior part of the chest followed by sudden death, but it must be remembered that Eougnon attributed the whole condition to ossification of the costal cartilages, and thereby shows such a complete misconception of the entire condition as to render his observations valueless when compared with the previous work of Morgagni. The proposal, therefore, of Huchard,® to associate the name of Eougnon with the disease is one calculated to provoke a smile. Far otherwise is it with the great man who inaugurated the study of the affection, and whose name will probably for all time be associated with cardiac pain, notwithstanding that, as we have seen, he was not by any means the first to describe angina pectoris. In his first com- munication, Heberden® published the investigations of more than twenty years, dealing with the cases of something like twenty patients, and containing an excellent description of most of the symptoms now known to us. In his “ Commentaries,” ’’ published a year after his death, he states that he had seen not less than 100 cases of the affection, of which there occurred three in women and one in a boy twelve years old; all the others were in men of above or nearly fifty. Changes in the coronary arteries associated with praecordial pain, although undoubtedly first published by Fother- ^ “ Opera Omnia,” Genevse, 1753, p. 248. ^ “ De sedibus et causis morborum,” Venetiis, 1762, tomus i. p. 283. “ “ Lettre a M. Lorry,” Besan9on, 1768, p. 1. “ Diseases of the Heart and Aorta,” Edin. and Lond., 1898, p. 758. ® Op. cit., p. 593. ^ Med. Trans. Roy. Coll. Rhys., London, 1772, vol. ii., p. 59. Commentarii do Morborum Historia et Curatione,” Londini, 1802, p. 308.