212 CIRCULATION. 



more in the female. 1 There are individual cases where the 

 pulse is normally much slower or more frequent than this, a 

 fact which must be remembered when examining the pulse 

 in disease. It is said that the pulse of Napoleon I. was only 

 forty per minute. Dr. Dunglison mentions a case which 

 came under his own observation, in which the pulse was on 

 an average thirty-six per minute. The same author states 

 that the pulse of Sir William Congreve was never below one 

 hundred and twenty-eight per minute, in health. 2 It is by 

 no means unfrequent to find a healthy pulse of a hundred or 

 more per minute. 



Influence of Age and Sex. In both the male and female, 

 observers have constantly found a great difference in the rapidi- 

 ty of the heart's action at different periods of life. The observa- 

 tions of Dr. Guy on this point are very numerous, and were 

 made with the utmost care with regard to the conditions of the 

 system, at the time the pulse was taken, in each case. All were 

 taken at the same hour, and with the subject in a sitting posture. 



Dr. Guy found the pulsations of the heart in the foetus 

 to be pretty uniformly 140 per minute. At birth the pulse 

 is 136. It gradually diminishes during the first year to about 

 128. The second year the diminution is quite rapid, the 

 tables of Dr. Guy giving 107 as the mean frequency at two 

 years of age. After the second year, the frequency progres- 

 sively diminishes until adult life, when it is at its minimum, 

 which is about 70 per minute. It is a common, but erro- 

 neous, impression that the pulse diminishes in frequency in 

 old age. On the contrary, numerous observations show that 

 at the latter periods of life the movements of the heart be- 

 come slightly accelerated, ranging from 75 to 80. 



During early life there is no marked and constant differ- 



1 Most of the facts which will be referred to with regard to the frequency of 

 the pulse are taken from the article of Dr. Guy (Pulse) in Todd's Cyclopaedia of 

 Anatomy and Physiology. 



2 Human Physiology. Philadelphia, 1856, vol. i., p. 445. 



