CANNONBALL HEART-BEATS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 89, 16 April 1927, Page 25

CANNONBALL HEART-BEATS.

iX>UD AS A RUMBLING TRAIN. Human heartleats so loud that they sounded "like a goods train rumbling over the points," and "like a barrel being pounded with a hammer," were heard recently by 200 medical students of the University of Pennsylvania. They listened to these remarkable sounds without earphones—simply through two loud-speakers attached to an electric stethoscope, which was amplifying ten thousand million times the heartbeats of patients 10 feet away. The instrument is capable of amplifying five hundred thousand million times. Students who saw the experiments on eight patients conducted by Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, were told that if the energy required to light a small pocket flashlight were magnified to the same extent as the heart-beats it would furnish more horsepower than was developed by all the electric generating plants in the world. The amazement of the students was, however, nothing to that of the patients themselves. "Why," said one man who had been through the world war, "my heart didn't beat, it roared. Sometimes I thought I was listening to the rumble of distant artillery." Another patient said, "My heart action sounded for all the world as though horses were clattering over cobblestones."