THE HEART.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 16, 19 January 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE HEART.

A MIRACULOUS ENGINE.

WHY IT STOPS

(By PERITUS.)

As the foremost cause of death, "heart disease" has drawn the special attention of life insurance companies no less than of physicians, surgeons, anatomists, physiologists, and coroners. About the size of the clenched fist, and weighing from 10 to 12 ounces, this com par tm en ted organ of muscular tissue rests only whilst at work in the short pauses between expansion and contraction. It will pump five quarts of blood (against resistance) at its normal rate per minute, and can do much, very much more, than that. A very useful and efficient engine.

As the tissue of the heart will "beat" before its nerve supply is in working order, and will beat after the nervea have been cut, it appears to have the power of contracting apart from nerve control and blood supply. Nevertheless it is affected by nerve control and blood supply, and submits to mechanical interference, malformation and disease. Physiologists say, "Wβ do not know what starts the heart beating, nor why it stops," but in a lees scientific sense it seems that lack of a sufficient amount of rest, deficient nourishment for its recuperation (defective blood supply), and poisons generated by disease or from outside infection will end its activities.

The advice usually given to sufferers from symptoms of heart affection include rest, moderate exercise, careful diet, no tea or alcohol (sometimes alcohol is ordered), "develop & calm even attitude to life," avoid excitement, stay out of doors, never get out of

breath, get ten hours' sleep of each 24, have tonsils and teeth examined, and watch your weight. It is mostly a pack of nonsense. Real, genuine, "dinkum" heart disease is exceptional. The heart usually rebels when there is any form of poisoning of the blood, when there is deficient action of bowel or kidney, when too much or too little or wrong food is habitual, when sudden strain (muscular or emotional) comes upon a heart not prepared for anything abnormal, and the hopping about at times of elderly men, who imagine they are "keeping fit," is a fruitful source of heart disturbance, because these same elderly men maintain a waistline, and often a distended bowel presses, or a distended stomach pushes, and the heart is crowded. Further, in advanced life, the arteries are not soft and elastic, and put up a greater resistance to the heart's pumping than they or the heart can long sustain without damage.

Rheumatism, and also some remedies, may injure a heart for life —and this from days of childhood, There has, perhaps, been rheumatic inflammation around the heart, and indeeed every sort of fever seems to bave and unpleasant effect upon it, probably by way of the blood stream, and the best treatment for this is a prolonged convalescence after any febrile disease. Influenza is a very burglar for leaving finger prints and traces can nearly always be found on brain and heart. There were 2150 deaths from "heart disease" in New Zealand in 1927. T , 3 registering doctors alone know how

many of these cases were really disease and not poisoning, strain, or the sequel (or symptom) of previous disease. The heart, being a muscje, requires regular and steady exercise, it needs room, and must not be intruded upon by gassy entrails, it must be permitted to age like the rest of the body, and if its owner has been fool enough to overstrain it in youth, or had it unfortunately overstrained in war, or cramped it by acquired disease, or poisoned it with alcohol, he had best leave his heart to

itself, and lead a steady, quiet reasonable working life, and he will he rewarded by what doctors name "compensation," which means that the heart accommodates itself to circumstances and carries on handsomely despite previous ill usage. Remember that most cases of pericardial round-about-the-heart pain is due to indigestion, gas, unsuitable food, tea, or an overloaded stomach or bowel. I learnt the heart sounds, and their meaning forty years :igo, but exactly what makes those sounds I do not know to this day. Ido know that many alarming messages come by those sounds, and few doctors can resist interpreting them as "disease," when it is, perhaps, only "static."