Disturbances of the Heart / Discussion of the Treatment of the Heart in Its Various Disorders, With a Chapter on Blood Pressure

by Oliver T. Osborne

HYPERTENSION

Arterial hypertension may be divided into stages. In the first stage the arteries are healthy, but the tone, owing to contraction of the muscular walls, is too great. This condition or stage has been termed "chronic arterial hypertension." This condition may be due to irritants circulating in the blood, to nervous tension, to incipient chronic interstitial nephritis, or may be the first stage of sclerosis of the arteries. If from any cause this hypertension persists, the muscular coats of the arteries will become more or less hypertrophied, and sooner or later degenerative changes begin in the intima, and finally fibrosis occurs in the external coat of the arteries; in other words, arteriosclerosis is in evidence. If the patient lives with this arteriosclerosis, a later stage of the arterial disease may occur which has been termed atheroma, with thickening, and possibly calcareous deposits in some parts of the walls of the vessels, while in other parts the coats become thinner and insufficient. At this stage the heart, which has already shown some trouble, becomes unable to force the blood properly against this enormous resistance of inelastic vessels and the blood pressure begins to fail as the left ventricle weakens.

Edema, failing heart, perhaps aneurysms, peripheral obstruction, or hemorrhages are the final conditions in this chronic disease of arteriosclerosis.

Riesman [Footnote: Riesman: Pennsylvania Med. Jour., December, 1911, p. 193.] divides hypertension into four classes hypertension without apparent nephritis or arterial disease; hypertension with arteriosclerosis; hypertension with nephritis, and hypertension with both arteriosclerosis and nephritis. These classes are given here in the order of the seriousness of the prognosis.

ETIOLOGY

One of the most common causes of hypertension is clue to excess of eating and drinking. The products caused by maldigestion of proteins, and the toxins formed and absorbed especially from meat proteins, particularly when the excretions are insufficient, are the most frequent causes of hypertension. Whatever other element or condition may have caused increased blood pressure, the first step toward improving and lowering this pressure is to diminish the amount of meat eaten or to remove it entirely from the diet. In pregnancy where there is increased metabolic change, when the proteins are not well or properly cared for in gout, and when there is intestinal fermentation or putrefaction, hypertension is likely to occur. The increased blood pressure in these cases is directly due to irritation of the toxins on the blood vessel walls.

While alcohol does not tend to raise arterial blood pressure, in large amounts it may raise the venous pressure. Also, by causing an abundant appetite and thus increasing the amount of food taken, by interfering with the activity of the liver, and by impairing the intestinal digestion, it can indirectly disturb the metabolism and cause enough toxin to be produced to raise the blood pressure.

Any drug or substance that raises the blood pressure by stimulating the vasomotor center or the arterioles, when constantly repeated, will be a cause of hypertension. This is particularly true of caffein and nicotin. Also, anything that might stimulate, or that does stimulate, the suprarenal glands will cause a continued high blood pressure. It is quite probable that in many cases of gout the suprarenals are hypersecreting and it has been shown by Cannon, Aub and Binger [Footnote: Cannon, Aub and Binger: Jour. Pharmacol. and Exper. Therap., March, 1912.] that nicotin in small closes increases the suprarenal secretion. Therefore, nicotin becomes a decided cause of hypertension and arteriosclerosis.

Thayer found that heavy work is the cause of about two thirds of all cases of arteriosclerosis, and one of the functions of the suprarenals is to destroy the waste products of muscular activity; hence these glands, in these cases, are hypersecreting. Furthermore, the reason that many infections are followed later by arterio- sclerosis may be the fact that the suprarenals have been stimulated to hypertrophy and hypersecrete.

Many persons in middle life, and especially women at the time of the menopause, show hypertension without arterial or kidney reason. At this time of life the thyroid is disturbed, and often, especially if weight is added, it is not secreting sufficiently. Whether, with the polyglandular disturbance of the menopause the suprarenals are excited and hypersecreting, or whether they are simply relatively secreting more vasopressor substance than is combated by the vasodilator substance from the thyroid, cannot be determined. These women are energetic, and look full of health and full of strength, but their faces frequently flush, sometimes they are dizzy, and the systolic blood pressure is too high. Reisman has pointed out that these patients are likely to have very large breasts, and there is reason to believe that we must begin to study more carefully the effect of large breasts on the metabolism of girls and women. There certainly is an internal secretion of some importance furnished by these glands.