THE ART STRAIN KILLED RHODES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11986, 7 June 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE ART STRAIN KILLED RHODES .

* We (New York Herald) are in a position tflt give accurate information concerning thd illness of Mr. Cecil Rhodes and the accidents which led to his death. 4 In spite of all thai has been said Mr. Cecil Rhodes never suffered from disease of the chest. The difficulty in breathing from which he suffered on arriving at the" Cape, at the age of seventeen years, was due to' the had state of his arterial circulation* which was also the cause of the malady. which ended in his death. From the age of sixteen years he showed symptoms of arterial hypertensionthat i* to say, an. exaggerated pressure .f blood in the arteries—and his heart was consequently obliged to exert a much greater amount of „ force to overcome this hypertension. Under this train the heart gradually became hypertrophied, and. in his case what is called a ', "hypertrophy of compensation" took place, a state perfectly compatible with the most ':'':'"* robust health. That health Mr. Cecil Rhodes never spared. His extraordinary activity further • augmented the tension of the blood in the arteries; and, in consequence, the work of j the heart. Up to the ago of forty to fortyfive years his heart was able to cope with this excessive work, but from thenceforward the cardiac tissue began to undergo a change, and the hypertrophy reached a limit which it could not exceed without danger to the organ itself. ' ■• ' * ■ !i It was at that time that serious events oc- .' ■ curred in South Africa—the siege of lumberley, etc. What Mr. Cecil Rhodes'could have borne at the age of from thirty to fori/ years he could -longer endure at from forty-five to forty-eight years, when the tissue of the heart had begun to undergo <i change, due to an unnatural'aging of the organ. If Mr. Cecil Rhodes could then have taken some rest everything would probably ■ have come right, but he continued to keep up the strain, thus requiring of his heart and circulation a constant effort of which neither was capable, and the compensating and al- -' most .providential hypertrophy was transformed into myocarditis—that is to .Bay, into a degeneration of the muscular fibre of the organ. It is to this chronic myocarditis: that the death of Mr. Cecil Rhodes is to bo attributed. • ' ;, If he had paused three years ago. when' the first signs of this myocarditis, then ate its initial stage, appeared; if he had then - given up all business and all travelling and had lived in the necessary state of physical ; and moral repose, there is no doubt that ho might have had a long career before him. -. In short, Mr. Cecil Rhodes, predisposed ' ' from his youth to chronic myocarditis, dua :."ii to arterial hypertension, brought on the malady which" had \ always threatened him by the active life. he ledi.by the perpetual nervous tension to which he exposed himself and by the frequent excitement which* /.'-■> even his force of character could only master and conceal at the cost of serious injur? - to the circulation of his blood, r <