Cornelius Black

“ To preserve the health of the tissues, the blood must not only be pure and rich in the materials of growth, but it must flow with a certain speed through all the blood-vessels. If the speed with which the blood moves is on the side of either plus or minus of the standard of health, disease will shortly arise. If it is on the side of plus, active disease of the heart, where that organ is the one to suffer, will follow. If on the side of minus, tissue degeneration will ensue. Active disease will be the consequence before middle age ”

“ If a man lives to the age of forty years without having suffered from cardiac disease, and, if after that period the heart becomes affected, the mischief will, as a rule, be found to exist on the right side. If, on the contrary, cardiac disease should occur before that age, the disease will, almost invariably, be found to exist on the left side. Hence, it follows that the right side of the heart is the seat of cardiac disease occurring after middle age—the left side of the heart the seat of cardiac disease occurring before middle age. ”

“ I hold that the breathing of impure air is a fruitful source of disease of the right heart occurring after middle age. How many people ignorantly favor its occurrence by confining themselves to closely-shut, non-ventilated, hot, stifling rooms, in which the carbonic acid has accumulated to 2 or 3 per cent. ”

“ Running, rowing, lifting, jumping, wrestling, severe horse-exercise, cricket, football, are fruitful causes of heart-disease. Those which require the breath to be suspended during their accomplishment are more fruitful causes in this respect than those which require no such suspension of the breathing. Rowing, lifting heavy weights, wrestling, and jumping, do this; and, of these, rowing is the most powerful for evil. At every effort made with the hands and feet, the muscles are strained to their utmost; the chest is violently fixed; no air is admitted into the lungs ”

“ If the heart is that point, disease falls upon it, and death before the legitimate term of man's existence is the consequence.
To keep the body in perfect health it must be duly oxygenated. There must be free and ample interchange between the blood in the lungs and the air entering the pulmonary cells. The life-stream must be purified by its elimination of carbonic acid; it must be vivified by the absorption of oxygen. The fulfilment of these conditions demands a full, free, and constant admission of pure air into the lungs. ”

“ There is no other disease in which the demand for cold, fresh air is so urgently pressed by the patient as in cardiac disease. There is none in which a constant supply of pure air is more needed—none in which it is more grateful to the patient, or in which it has a more immediately beneficial effect. ”

“ Blood charged with an excess of carbonic acid again pervades every tissue of the heart, diminishing its vitality, lowering its sensibility, and assimilating its nutrition to that of the reptilian heart. But the low character of the nutrition of the reptilian heart does not accord with the comparatively quick circulation, rapid nutrition, vital power, and energy of action required by the human heart. The one cannot be substituted for the other. In man the change results in disease where disease does not exist—aggravates disease where it is already present.—Lancet. ”

“ If the brain and nervous system are overworked, vitality is lowered, the resisting power of the body is diminished, disease is easily produced. If the brain and nervous system are underworked, the generation of nervous power is low and deficient, the vitality of the tissues becomes low in proportion, and disease is easily excited. ”

“ These symptoms deepen with the increasing quantity of carbonic acid in the air respired until the utmost limit of toleration is reached, beyond which life can no longer be maintained. At this stage lethargy supervenes; and, at the moment of its occurrence, the heart begins to beat less frequently and much less powerfully than before. This condition is the parallel of that observed in the young trout, when the blood begins to accumulate and to coagulate in the auricle and ventricle, and when the heart's sensibility and contractility are reduced in the greatest degree. ”

“ The rich, stimulating blood of the left ventricle urges, feeds, and actively supports any disease which may arise at that point; while the poor, impoverished, fouled, tainted, and attenuated blood which flows through the cavities of the right heart favors disease of a correspondingly low and degenerate character. ”

“ It must be remembered that the oxygen contained in the air of the room would be constantly undergoing reduction by respiration during the night. If the quantity thus consumed were determined from the quantity of carbonic acid exhaled, allowing for the fact that 15 per cent. more oxygen is taken into the blood than is contained in the carbonic acid of the air expired, it will be found that from one-third to one-half of the oxygen originally contained in the air of the room would have been consumed by the end of the night. ”

“ As to underground railways, the best plan is to avoid them. True, the time passed in their polluted atmosphere is usually very short; but it is, nevertheless, sufficiently long to paralyze occasionally the heart's action, and always, by its pollution of the blood and by its direct effect upon the nervous system, to favor degeneration of the structures of the heart. ”

“ It often occurs to a medical man to visit a patient for the first time, and to find him suffering from a dilated right heart. He may for some short time have been sensible of a change in his breathing on walking rather quickly, or in mounting the stairs, or he may never have felt, or at least recognized, any such sensations. ”

“ How many are thus destroyed by being compelled, through the exigencies of life, to pass the greater part of their time in pits and manufactories where ventilation is defective, or in which the air respired is poisoned by noxious fumes and offensive emanations from the materials undergoing the process of manufacture! ”

“ Hypertrophy, hæmoptysis, inflammatory affections of the heart and lungs, are the consequences in the young; valvular incompetency, rupture of the valves or of the muscular fibres of the heart, pulmonary apoplexy, and cerebral hæmorrhage, are too frequently the immediate consequences in those of more mature years. ”

“ They hurry the heart's action to an inordinate degree, they cause it to throw the blood with great force into the extreme vessels, and, as there is almost always one organ of the body weaker than the others, the vessels of this organ become distended, and, remaining distended, the organ itself becomes diseased. ”

“ Overwork exhausts, ruins, kills the body, just as the continued generation of the galvanic current exhausts the acid and wears out the zinc plate. The weakest point of the body has to bear the result of this violation of Nature's laws. ”

“ Acute rheumatism—a fruitful cause of cardiac disease in the earlier periods of life—is seldom seen beyond the age of fifty. I have, however, attended a case of acute articular rheumatism at the age of seventy-five ”

“ Where this means is defective, but where, nevertheless, the vitiation of the air of the bedroom does not exceed 1 per cent. of carbonic acid, a sensible effect is produced upon those who have slept within its influence. They complain, on leaving their bed, of weakness; their limbs tremble; they feel somewhat giddy, and their head feels heavy, or it aches. The least effort disturbs the heart's action, which is somewhat quick and feeble ”

“ If in this condition any stress is thrown upon the heart by hurried walking, by lifting, climbing, violent declamation, passional expression, singing, laughing, or by any unusual exercise of the voice, the tricuspid valve gives way, it henceforth fails to close its aperture, and the results of a back-flooding of blood upon the venous system of the body begin to follow. ”

“ This full, free, and constant admission of pure air cannot be obtained in badly-ventilated houses, crowded buildings, schools as at present constructed, theatres, manufactories, pits, underground railways, and the like. ”