Patients in Ward K of the Armory Square Hospital. The American civil War Picture Database.www.civilwar-pictures.com.
This paper examines the characteristics and the conditions for the emergence of the nosological category known as irritable heart syndrome to be found in Anglo-American medical literature in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the context of the American Civil War, this article looks at some of the socio-historical elements, which comprised the medical care given to certain cardiac symptoms shown by soldiers.
The name most commonly associated with the irritable heart syndrome seen in soldiers was Jacob Mendes Da Costa who was the first physician to link the symptoms he was observing – such as palpitations – to psychological factors. Basically, he regarded the condition he was seeing in patients as a “cardiac neurosis”. Since there was no physical signs of actual heart disease involved, the symptoms themselves represented the condition to be treated.
VILARINHO, Yuri C. Irritable heart syndrome in Anglo-American medical thought at the end of the nineteenth century. Hist. cienc. saude-Manguinhos [online]. 2014, vol.21, n.4, pp. 1151-1177. ISSN 0104-5970.
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