Palpitations. 309 



pulse was soft and regular. The breathing was peculiar. On 

 approaching the ear to the nostrils the animal is heard to make 

 three successiv'e inspirations which coincide with the beats of 

 the heart ; each of these inspirations is followed by an expira- 

 tion so short and feeble that the expired air can not be felt ; the 

 fourth is followed by full expiration sustained during three 

 beats of the heart." This form of respiration was continued 

 without intermission for an entire day. 



In three ca.ses observed at the Lyons Veterinary School the 

 disease continued for eight days. In all these and twenty more 

 observed by Leblanc, the patients invariably recovered. The 

 steady persistence of the disease for .several days and the subse- 

 quent complete recovery under the unaided action of digitalis 

 would .seem to warrant the conclusion that such cases were really 

 accompaniments of structural diseases of the heart and not mere 

 functional disorders. Even inflammation of the lining membrane 

 of the heart often exists without any obvious fever or other 

 manifest symptom of illness, and in the dissecting rooms of 

 medical schools nothing is more common than to find traces of 

 pre-exi.sting heart di.sease in patients whose whole life had been 

 pas.sed without the suspicion of such a malady. 



A number of such cases observed in England and on the Euro- 

 pean Continent are adduced to prove .spasm of the diaphragm or 

 of the abdominal muscles, (Delafond), and great importance is 

 attached to the fact that the convulsive movements of the abdo- 

 men and loins are heterochronous with the beats of the heart. 

 This lack of exact coincidence however does not seem to amount 

 to more than a perceptible delay after the heart beat, ju.st as the 

 maxillary pulsation is delayed in case of aneurism of the aorta. 

 This has been my own experience with such cases. The flank 

 movements have been equal in number to the heart beats or have 

 corresponded to certain beats in the heart C3xle, and have been 

 perceptibly retarded in accordance with the necessity for time for 

 the transmission of the blood wave along the po.sterior aorta and 

 the development of the reflex action which set the phrenic and ab- 

 dominal muscles in motion. We must of course accept the con- 

 vulsive action of the phrenic and abdominal muscles, only it would 

 seem that each such movement has its starting point in the con- 

 traction of the heart. In cases that show no relation in number 



