Volume 1

Lectures on subjects connected with clinical medicine : comprising diseases of the heart. / By P. M. Latham.

  • Latham, P. M. (Peter Mere), 1789-1875.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on subjects connected with clinical medicine : comprising diseases of the heart. / By P. M. Latham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    is only acting more forcibly from pure excess of nervous energy. When impulse and sound decrease together, there is probably no atrophy, but the heart is only acting more feebly from pure defect of nervous energy. When the sounds and impulse of the heart are both perceived beyond the pnecordial region, they give notice (generally speaking) of dilatation of one or other of the ventricles. If, under these circumstances, sound predominate over impulse, then with dilatation there is either attenuation, or somewhat less than a proportionate increase of its muscular substance. If impulse predominate over sound, with dilatation there is either hy- pertrophy or somewhat more than a proportionate increase of its muscular substance. Thus it is seen how much information respect- ing many, the most important structural changes, which the heart is liable to undergo, may be conveyed merely by the greater or less intensity, and by the greater or less extent, of its sounds and impulses. But, amid these sounds and impulses, what is the place and what the value of percussion ? Wait a moment, and we shall see. For this matter of percussion must first be cleared a little of certain difficulties, which lie in the way of our rightly understanding its diagnostic uses in application to the heart, before we can well see what those uses are.