SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS. 



Abstracts of Communications. 

 Eightieth Meeting. 

 43 (1221) 



College of Physicians and Surgeons. President Jacques Loeb in 



the chair. 



Changes in the electrocardiogram due possibly to alterations in 



blood volume. 



By R. A. MORISON, M.D. (by invitation.) 



[From the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, 



New York.] 



There are reported in this communication certain changes fo 

 the electrocardiogram, which are supposed to have been influenced 

 by changes of the blood volume in patients. The changes are in 

 the latter part of the ventricular complex, the T wave, and appear 

 in one patient in the most marked extent in the first lead and in 

 another patient most markedly in the third lead. 



The first patient suffered from chronic hypertensive nephritis, 

 cardiac hypertrophy and arterial disease. Before bleeding, an 

 electrocardiogram was made, using the second lead only. He 

 was bled 500 c.c. Afterward, with the same resistance, the same 

 tension of the string, the same strength of magnetic field, and with 

 the same position of the patient, a second electrocardiogram was 

 made and showed a much increased amplitude of the T wave in 

 the second lead. Leads one and three were not taken. This 

 patient was then given a test in which he drank 1,500 c.c. of water 

 in fifteen minutes. His electrocardiogram was made before the 

 beginning of the test and about every hour thereafter for ten 

 hours; then at varying periods until about twenty- three hours 

 had elapsed. Six hours and thirty-seven minutes after he had 



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