THE FOUR COMMON TYPES OF HEART-DISEASE

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Abstract
To classify cases of disease according to their pathogenic agent or process, and not solely by naming the region affected or the function disturbed, is the ideal of scientific progress in medicine. But until the last decade we have made little advance in this direction as regards the diseases which gravely disturb heart function. Thus we still find in standard text-books a section devoted to "mitral regurgitation," its diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, although mitral regurgitation is almost as vague a phrase as "spinal paralysis" or "brain fever." Just as a "spinal paralysis" may be due to trauma, to the tubercle bacillus, to theSpirochaeta pallida, to the organism of poliomyelitis or to cancer, so "mitral regurgitation" is only a symptom caused by the action of streptococci, by the degenerative lesions of arteriosclerosis, by the muscle-tiring resistance of nephritic hypertension and probably by many other causes. It probably contributes its mite

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