CANNONBALL HEART-BEATS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 30 April 1927, Page 6

CANNONBALL HEART-BEATS

LOUD AS A RUMIHJiNG TRAIN

Human heartbeats so loud Dial they sounded "like a goods train rumbling over the points," and "like a, barrel be jug pouruled with a hammer," were htera recently by 300 Vnedi.csd stnde'iit* of tlie Uaivereity ot Pennsylvania. The-, 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 1.0 feel 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 it' 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 Ihe electric generating plants in the world. The amazement of the slndents was, however, nothing to that of (he patients themselves-. "Why," said one man. who had been through the world war, "my heart didn't, beat, it rear."*!. Sometimes I thought" 1 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."