THE HEART IS TOUGH
SOME FALLACIES EXPOSED
The modern approach to the study of the heart and its action in health and disease has led to the exploding of many fallacies, writes the medical correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post."
The work of the late Sir James Mackenzie, the development of the electro-cardiogram, and more recently the scope and accuracy with which the X-ray screen can now present the living heart for inspection and measurement, have all combined to revolutionise various old and long-established views about the significance of certain heart conditions.
This has been emphasised in a brief but very illuminating paper, published in the "British Medical Journal" by two experienced cardiologists, Dr. J. W. Vinnell and Dr. W. A. R. Thomson.
Thus the belief, so often still held, that shortness of breath in a middleaged or elderly stout man or woman is probably due to a "fatty heart" is probably quite erroneous.
Indeed, the authors hold that the term "fatty heart" seldom represents any such fact, and would in any case be a condition scarcely possible to diagnose during life if it existed.
Another still very commonly held belief is that a healthy heart can be injured by mere physical strain or muscular exertion.
The so-called "athlete's heart" is, in fact, a bogy, and the authors fully support Lewis's contention, the result of a very wide experience, that "the burdens imposed by physiological acts upon the normal heart, however heavy these burdens may be, never injure the heart and fibres, never produce injurious dilatation, and never exhaust the heart's reserve."
Again at one time, every so-called heart murmur was regarded as a serious portent, whereas it is now fully established that very many of these are of no significance at all, and indeed, at certain ages and in persons of certain types of physique, they may almost be regarded as normal.
Finally, in the great majority of cases, dizziness and faintness are not indications of a "weak" or diseased heart. They are much more likely to be of psycho-neurotic origin.
In other words, the heart is an extremely tough and resilient organ, exceedingly difficult to damage by any ordinary^ process of life, and with immense reserves and powers of compensation even when it has been injured by disease.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 102, 27 October 1938, Page 5
Word Count
382THE HEART IS TOUGH Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 102, 27 October 1938, Page 5
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