Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1896 — A PHENONEMAL HUMAN HEART [ARTICLE]

A PHENONEMAL HUMAN HEART

t Beats So Loud That it Ca»i Be Heard Twelve Feet Away, Two great English physicians are the authority for the unique and strange fact that there is a girl in London town whose heart beats so loud that its “murmur” can be heard twelve feet away. This is a case so unprecedented in medical annals that doctors acknowledge it the loudest heartbeat in the world. When it comes to be considered that hearts under ordinary conditions beat silently, so that they cannot be beard unless one’s ear is put close to the chest, the wonder and the oddity of a heart whose pulsations can actually be heard four yards away, or fully across the ordinary room of a city house, is manifest. One would think that such a girl would be in a very bad way, that she must be seriously ill and likely to die quickly. But just the reverse is true. The girl who has this unique heart, a fifteen-year-old English maiden, of rugged health, strength and vigor, is so well that the only inconvenience she feels from her abnormal heart action is that she gets quickly out of breath. In all other respects she is quite in normal health. Her heart is not enlarged or dilated, and she is able to do the things day by day that an ordinary English girl does. Not only can the beating cf her heart be heard twelve feat away, but it can be heard when the young woman h'as all her clothes on. The doctors that have reported the case have experimented to a considerable extent with her, and they have found out what is even more remarkable, viz., that if, her chest being bared, she stands three feet away from a closed door and a listener places himself three feet on the other side of the door, the listener can hear her heart beat distinctly and perfectly. The curious disease with which she is affected is known scientifically as “mitral murmur,” “mitral” being the technical name of the valve between the left auricle and the left ventricle of the heart. Thus the disease is what is known as a valvular trouble. In most cases any valvular affection of the cardiac region is attended with considerable danger, and not infrequently it results in death within a few years. But the physicians anticipate no such termination in this girl’s case. She is in too good health generally and she feels little inconvenience from the malady, if it be one.