Excerpt from The Mechanism of the Heart Beat: With Especial Reference to Its Clinical Pathology Our knowledge of the clinical pathology of the heart has advanced with such rapidity during the last decade, and the subject as a whole has become so technical, that at the present time it is difficult or well-nigh impossible for the general reader to keep pace with its progress. The writings are scattered; they call, in the reading, for considerable preliminary knowledge of the subject matter discussed. In contemplating the work of the past few years, it seemed to me that a stage of the enquiry had been reached at which it was possible to give a review of the main results of the numerous researches, and to place before the student of general medicine the evidences upon which the chief conclusions of the present day rest. A number of phenomena, observed in clinical and experimental studies, are described side by side in this book, and an attempt is made to show the manner in which abnormal actions of the heart, as they occur in patients, may be identified with similar disturbances artificially created in laboratory experiment. It has been deemed advisable to restrict the chapters, so far as possible, to a discussion of those subjects alone, in which our knowledge of the facts and the conclusions derived therefrom appear to stand on a sure footing. 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.