Book Description

Excerpt from American Journal of Diseases of Children, 1915, Vol. 10 Congenital dextrocardia is an exceedingly rare condition (Foggie, Graanboom and Osier), one of us (Moffett) being able to find only 126 cases reported in a review of the literature from the year 1649. The exact cause for this malposition does not seem to be clear, though numerous investigators (Pegroux, Kussmaul, Winslow and Maschkox, Seres and Sabatier, Selon Dareste, Fol and Waryuski, von Baer, Bischofif and others) have suggested various theories for this abnormality. The most prominent theory (suggested by Fol and Waryuski) is that in the prenatal development of-the heart, the right side develops more rapidly than the left and pulls the heart to that side. No theory is sufficiently convincing to explain all cases. Cases of complete transposition of all the organs are numerous, but dextrocardia alone, as in our case, is exceedingly rare. Almost all of the cases of dextrocardia alone that have been reported present symptoms of congenital defects of the heart itself. This has been corroborated by frequent necropsy reports (Ziegler, Fussell, Probyn-Williams, Ewald, Theremin, Keith, Hochsinger and others). It is interesting to note that most of the cases that have been observed are in the male sex - our case was that of a male child. The early cases of pure dextrocardia were merely clinical reports, but about the middle of the nineteenth century the first postmortem records appear. Schroetter reported a case in 1870 and gave a complete review of the subject. Case Report The subject of this paper, D. L., a boy (History No. 3861, 1914, History No. 3009, 1915), came under our observation on Oct. 17, 1914, at the German Hospital Dispensary, New York. The family history is as follows: Number of children living, 7; number of deaths or miscarriages, 3; no history of tuberculosis, rheumatism or syphilis. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.