12 C. W. M. Poynter 



For the convenience of presentation we will divide the cases, 

 after Breschet (1826), into internal and external misplacements. 



I. Internal Misplacements 



(a) Those displacements of the heart in the chest are gener- 

 ally known as dextrocardia. They are most frequent of all mis- 

 placements of the heart and consist of a transfer of the heart to 

 the right side of the chest in a mirror position to that it nor- 

 mally occupies. When all of the other viscera are also trans- 

 posed the condition is known as viscerum transversus ; this 

 condition was first reported by Ricolanus in 1649 and is of suffi- 

 ciently frequent occurrence to need no discussion here. The 

 transposition of the heart alone is of much rarer occurrence. 

 When unassociated with other anomalies the condition is without 

 clinical interest and is only discovered when general examina- 

 tions are made or at postmortem. 



Paltauf (1901) has pointed out that all cases are not alike. 

 In one group the heart has simply rotated to the right, so that 

 the dorsal and ventral relations are reversed, the tricuspid ven- 

 tricle still receiving the venous blood. The other group repre- 

 sent true transposition and are very rare, Graanboom's (1891) 

 case being an example. 



The cases of congenital dextrocardia must be distinguished 

 from those cases of misplacement due to some pathological 

 process as contracture of adhesions or pressure of pleuritic 

 effusions. A large number of clinical cases have appeared in the 

 literature in the last two decades since the X-ray has come into 

 such general use in study of chest conditions, some of these cases 

 are no doubt congenital, but none of them are included in this list. 

 Foggie (1910) has an extensive bibloigraphy of clinical cases. 



I. (a) Dextrocardia: Otto (1814), Otto (1816), Breschet (1826), Thore 

 (1845), Mosler (1866), Falck (1877), Smith (1878), Robinson (1881), 

 Ghose (1882), Pope (1882), Jacoby (1884), Bamberger (1888), Chabrely 

 (1888), Grus (1888), Northrup (1888), Grunmach (1890), Sandhop (1890), 

 Becker (1891), Graanboom (1890), Birmingham (1892), Williams (1892), 

 Lochte (1894), Auche & Bouyer (1897), Reifschlager (1897), Petit et 

 Ravant (1898), Dalton (1899), Lowenthal (1900), Paltauf (1901), Baum- 

 garth (i902),.Lucchi (1902), Wendling (1903), Carletti (1906), Garrod & 



