THE FRONTIERS OF MEDICHSTE 



With the heart, as with other portions of the body, it is 

 extremely difficult to separate the effects that are purely 

 mental from those that are physical. Associated with the 

 shock of the World War were many cases of neurocircula- 

 tory asthenia, or weakness of the heart and of the nervous 

 system, in which patients suffered from palpitation and 

 pains and weakness without any detectable physical 

 change being present. It is an extremely difficult diagnostic 

 task to separate such cases from actual cases of heart disease. 



In all of this work the newer devices that have been 

 developed and the research that has come from the lab- 

 oratories of physiology, pathology, and bacteriology 

 throughout the world, have been of inestimable value. The 

 endowments that continue to grow for furthering such 

 investigation are going to make safer and happier men, 

 women, and children in the future. 



Diseases of the Lungs. The lungs, which are subject to 

 many disorders, are now investigated not only by the old 

 method, wherein the physician thumps and listens, but 

 also by laboratory tests of the secretions from the lungs, 

 by the use of the X-ray, by the insertion of a needle, and 

 by the injection of substances which make the lungs 

 particularly visible under the X-ray. Whereas the lung 

 complaints most commonly considered in the past were 

 bronchitis, pneumonia, and, most frequently of all, 

 tuberculosis, to-day it is known that the lungs may be 

 infected by many other bacterial organisms, that chronic 

 diseases may produce permanent changes in the lungs 

 which interfere with breathing, that the lungs may be 

 subject to cavity, to consolidation, to the growth of tumors, 

 to the inhaling of foreign bodies, and to many other con- 

 ditions. When the diagnosis is properly made, treatment 

 applied to the specific cause of the disturbance frequently 

 results in the cure of cases which formerly passed inevitably 

 to death. 



[203] 



