Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/586

552 receiving the rudiments of education from his father, was sent by the kindness of a gentleman to the free school of Bray, &quot;on purpose to learn the Latin tongue.&quot; This gentleman in 1695 took him into his house, and his educa tion was continued at Bray till the Easter of 1696, when he was sent to study at Edmund Hall, Oxford. There his diligence and scholarship attracted the attention of Dr John Mill, the editor of the Greek Testament with various read ings, who employed him to compare several MSS. Hearne took the degree of B.A. in 1699, and on account of the reputation he had acquired for his knowledge of books he was in 1701 appointed assistant-keeper of the Bodleian Library. There at his own option he set himself dili gently to correct the catalogue, and prepared an appendix which was afterwards incorporated in the new catalogue without acknowledgment. His interest in the antiquarian treasures of the library induced him to refuse many valu able preferments, and in 1712 he was appointed second keeper, with the stipulation made by himself that he should also be janitor, so as to obtain access to the library at any time he pleased. In 1714 or 1715 he was elected archi- typographus and esquire beadle of civil law in the university, but, an objection being taken to his holding this office along with that of second librarian, he resigned it in the November following. In January 1716 he was compelled, on account of his refusal to take the onths to the Govern ment, to resign also his appointment of librarian, but he continued to reside principally at Oxford, where he occupied himself chiefly in preparing for publication the works of old English authors. His injudicious and inappropriate inser tion of Jacobite sentiments in his prefaces awakened, how ever, the hostility of the university magnates, and subjected him to several prosecutions. He died 10th June 1735.

1em

1em  HEART,, form a large proportion of the most serious disorders that afflict mankind, in youth as well as in advanced life. For the structure and functions of the organ the reader is referred to and . In the early ages of medicine, the absence of correct anatomical, physiological, and pathological knowledge pre vented diseases of the heart from being recognized with any C3rtainty during life, and almost entirely precluded them from b-c jming the objects of medical treatment. But no sooner did Harvey (1628) publish his discovery of the circ-ilition of tha blood, and its dependence on the heart as its central organ, than derangements of the circulation began to be recognized as signs of disease of that central organ. The earliest indications of this important step in the diagnosis of these diseases are to be found in the instruc tive records contained in the writings of the great patho- logists of the beginning of the 18th century, of whom the chief in this respect are Lancisi, Morgagni, Senac, and Meckel. There is, however, a limit to the information obtainable in this way; and, though its range has been largely increased in our day by the invention of such instruments as the sphygmograph and cardiograph, &c., it was very easily reached in those early times, when men had only their unaided senses to depend upon, and but little ex perience to guide them. We need not wonder, then, that after the first great step was taken there was but little further progress made, and medicine had to wait till the beginning of another century, when Corvisart (1806) first made practical use of Auenbrugger s (1761) invention of percussion to determine the size of the heart, enlargement of that organ bulking largely in those days as a substantive disease. Corvisart was also in the habit of listening to the sounds made by the heart, and he may therefore be regarded as ths first practical exponent of our modern methods of physical exploration, though scarcely as their founder. For as Auenbrugger invented percussion, so Laennec (1819) was undoubtedly the first to make a scien tific application of mediate auscultation to the diagnosis of diseases of the chest, and it is to him we trace all the benefits derived from this method of inquiry, though it is to Bouillaud (1824) that we are chiefly indebted for its extension to the diagnosis of diseases of the heart ; while it is to the clinical experience, and above all to the practical experiments, of James Hope (1832) that we owe much of that precision we have now attained in our diagnosis of those diseases from abnormalities in the sounds produced during the cardiac movements ; just as we have learned from M. Forget (1851) the doctrine of retro-dilatation, which rightly interpreted is capable of greatly informing us as to the origin and progress of heart disease, and from William Stokes (1854) some instructive views on defective heart power as a cause of certain symptoms simulating disease of the brain, which have proved most valuable and suggestive in the diagnosis of diseases of the heart as well as in their treatment. The half dozen works just alluded to by no means ex haust the literature of this subject during the past ages, but each of them marks an era, and by their means we may readily trace the progress of cardiac diagnosis during the 130 years intervening between Lancisi and Stokes ; but during the twenty odd years that have since elapsed the literature of this subject has become so unusually copious and exhaustive that it would occupy too much space merely to enumerate the authors names. Fortunately this further development need not concern us here. As in former so in recent times the progress made in the diagnosis of diseases of the heart has been entirely based on physics and on physiology, and the heart is an orgin so situated and so connected as to render it singularly amenable to these methods of investigation. Resting on the diaphragm, and projected against the anterior chest- wall, the heart is partly within reach, and is otherwise so completely surrounded on three sides by resonant organs (the lungs) that any change in its position or in its size is readily made out by palpation and percussion, while by listening over the cardiac area auscultation we can ascertain whether the valves of the heart remain intact, have an unusual strain thrown upon them, or have been rendered incompetent by disease. As the four openings of the heart lie so close together that a superficial area of half a square inch includes a part 