Modern medicine v 1 1907 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. DISEASES OF THE MYOCARDIUM. By ROBERT H. BABCOCK, M.D. DISEASES RESULTING FROM DERANGEMENTS OF CARDIAC NUTRITION. Both the functional and... more » structural integrity of the heart muscle is dependent upon a supply of healthy blood, any abnormality in either the constitution or amount of which must affect it more or less seriously. In simple anaemia the heart may display weakness, dilatation, and increased frequency, whereas, in pernicious anaemia it may suffer degeneration. Again, autointoxication may probably be responsible for intennittency in its action, while the toxins of acute specific fevers are capable of producing structural changes of a most disastrous kind. It is, however, the mechanical interference with its blood supply from coronary sclerosis which is the most surely injurious, and it is the myocardial disease of this origin that is most frequently encountered. Accordingly, whenever there is a structural defect with an insufficiency of the myocardium, it is usually found to depend upon'a disorder of cardiac nutrition. Etiology.—Acute Myocardial Degeneration.—Acute Injections.—For the most part it is the parenchymatous form of acute myocarditis which is seen as a result of acute infectious diseases. It is a manifestation of the action of toxins conveyed to the myocardium in the blood, and hence the likelihood of degeneration is proportionate to the intensity of the toxaemia and not its continuance (Romberg). Of the infections likely to lead to myocardial degeneration the most prominent are diphtheria, typhus, and typhoid fevrr. The involvement may declare itself during the course of the fever, but in many instances it becomes apparent only after the subsidence of the primary disease. It is also worthy of note that in the case of diphtheria the cu...« less