We present another vignette in our series of Catholic Men of Medicine. Sir Dominic       Corrigan made definite contribution in his studies of the actions of the heart and his story       should be of interest to our readers

Podolsky, Edward

English

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The Linacre QuarterlyVolume 28 | Number 2 Article 2May 1961Sir Dominic Corrigan: Healer of HeartsEdward PodolskyFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnqRecommended CitationPodolsky, Edward (1961) "Sir Dominic Corrigan: Healer of Hearts," The Linacre Quarterly: Vol. 28 : No. 2 , Article 2.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol28/iss2/2Since the last issue of our journal, your President has been fulfilling of speaking engagements in behalf of the Federation and a most pleasurab' was spent in Boston, March 5, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of of St. Luke. This group is certainly to be congratulated for its half c existence, preceding by a number of years our national organization. Its a ments are great and it is our profound wish that the future will provide e,. progress. We look now to events which will bring our Guilds together in l' during the week of June 25. The A.M.A. annual convention will be h Coliseum and the Federation -will again be an exhibitor. Our space is C-· urge our members to visit there and bring their friends. Staffing, too, necessary and any of our doctor-members who could give a few hours , days from the 25th through the 30th would be most welcome. You have been advised of the full day of Federation activities sci: June 28. Our Memorial Mass for deceased members of the Federatio A.M.A. will be offered at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Cardinal Spellman "' brant and our Moderator, Monsignor D. A. McGowan, will preach t• We urge large participation in the Mass. We hope your families will joira At 11 :00 a.m. delegates from our Guilds will hold their annual Boa· at the Commodore Hotel. This is a very important session and it is imp< our affiliated member groups be represented. Each Guild is entitled tc representative to the meeting and the name should be sent to our Executive Miss Jean Read, at the central office in St. Louis, to include in the Roll will welcome our 100th Guild to the meeting. Catholic physicians of t' diocese in Minnesota. with headquarters in Rochester, have joined to mak number of affiliated Guilds. We congratulate Dr. Clarence G. Ochsne, and his fellow-members on their formation and affiliation with the natio zation. The Board meeting is very important. Our constituent members to their ideas for the welfare of the Federation and its activities and or representation at the session itself is this possible. We trust, therefore, t, count on a large delegation. The evening of June 28 will provide a gala social gathering which will be as memorable as the Federation's 25th Jubilee celebration held i reception at 6:30 p.m. followed by dinner at 8 :00 p.m. will be held in Ballroom at the Commodore Hotel. Excellent cuisine will be complerr the music of the Stanley Melba orchestra. The speaker of the evening. " special message for our medical profession, will be Congressman John ' from Rhode Island, known to many as a friend of medical research interested in the work of the Department of Health, Education and Welfar will follow the dinner. We look forward to meeting friends from all >' country on this occasion and know you will want to be present. 'lumber �vening e Guild ,ury of mplish­greater v York at the and we always of the Jled for and the be cele­sermon. ·ith you. meeting ive that end one ccretary. ,11. We Winona his total Jresident. organi· ve voice through we can is hoped 1957. A ,e Grand ,red with h a very Fogarty d deeply Dancing ts of the Please mark June 28 very specially on your calendar to participate i;· all of the National Federation activities to be held in New York City if you are > !anning to attend the A.M.A. annual convention. This day is set aside for all p )grams of organized groups thereby giving full time for full attendance with us. We look forward to meeting with you. EusEBms J. MuRPHY M.D. 54 LINACRE QUARTERLY SIR DOMINIC CORRIGAN: Healer of HeartJ EDWARD PODOLSKY, M�D. LITT.D. We present another vignette in our series of Catholic Men of Medicine. Sir Dominic Corrigan made definite contribution in his studies of the actions of the heart and his story should be of interest to our readers. JT WAS NOT too long ago that physicians realized the con­tracting heart muscles made sounds, and that when one listened to those sounds he could learn a great deal about the condition of the heart. It was William Harvey who discovered the circulation of the blood, listened to the sounds that the heart made as it worked and believed that they might be of some value in eliciting vital infor­mation about the organ and its function. There was also Dr. Robert Hooke, an original thinker who was far ahead of his time. Living more than a hundred years before Rene Laennec. who invented the stethescope a·nd made the listen­ing to heart sounds. less arduous. Dr. Hooke speculated with some degree of imagination on sounds of the internal organs and the meaning of them. He wrote: There may also be a possibility of dis­covof ��g the internal motions and actions uuwes by the sounds they make. Who knows but that, as in a watch, we may bear. the beating of the balance, and the l'llllning of the wheels and the striking of the hammers and the grating of the � and multitudes of other noises; who uiows, I say, but that it may be possible -�· Podolsky is a practising psychiatrist Brooklyn, New York. He is the •utbor of several textbooks on psychia­try - The Management of Addictions 111d The Neuroses and Their Treatment, :Jrell as numerous articles published in la cal and lay publications. His hobby medical history and biography. MAv, 1961, to discover the motions of the internal parts of bodies. whether animal, vege­table. or mineral, by the sounds they make: that one may discover the works performed by the several offices and shops of man's body, and thereby dis­cover what instrument or engine is out of order, what works are going on at certain times, and lie still at others, and the like. I have been able to hear very plainly the beating of a man's heart, and it is common to hear the motion of the wind to and fro in the guts, and other small vessels: the stopping of the lungs is easily discovered by the wheezing, the heart by the humming and whistling nojses, the slipping to and fro of the joints, in many cases by crackling, and the like . : . So to their becoming sens­ible they require either that motions be increased or that the organ be made more nice and powerful to sensate and distinguish them. Somewhat later an event oc­curred that enabled Dr. Rene T. H. Laennec to make an importantdiscovery. One day crossing thecourtyard of the Louvre, he sawsome children listening at one endof a beam of wood to the soundmade by striking a pin on the otherend. He was inspired to try thesame procedure when listening tothe sounds of the chest. He made the first crude stethe­scope entirely out of wood, but it magnified the heart sounds aston­ishingly, and he heard sounds that no doctor had heard before. For two years he went from patient to patient listening through the steth­escope. At the end of that time he wrote a book on the subject and 55 g"".re a very learned lecture before the Academy of Sciences. Dr. Laennec rapidly found dis­ciples, bright young medical men who took up the new instrument with enthusiasm. There were sev­eral young English doctors who were firm believers in ausculation. Among them was Dr. William Stokes, who wrote quite an ex­haustive book on the new medical art. Dr. Stokes had graduated from Edinburgh in 1825. In the same class was another Irishman, Domi­nic John Corrigan, who was des­tined to play an important role in learning to understand the lan­guage of the heart. Dr. Corrigan settled in his native Dublin and busied himself with dispensary work. But he was mostly interest­ed in the heart especially in the information that the heart sounds convey. Within five years Dr. Corrigan had learned a sufficient number of facts to write a paper entitled "On the Motions and Sounds of the Heart." which was published in 1830. From then on he began to devote most of his time to studies on the valves of the heart. He learned to know what these differ­ent ·sounds meant and what type of valve deformity they represent­ed. The modern doctor is thorough­ly acquainted with heart sounds. When he places his stethescope over the heart, he hears a variety of sounds and he knows just what each sound means. In the normal heart he hears two sounds re-56 sembling "Jub-dub;" that first sound is similar to "Ii the second emits a "dub first sound is due to the • tion of the power parts heart. The second is du, slap produced when the ac pulmonic valves close. When these sounds are with murmurs, the examin tor begins to suspect that is not as it should be. A means just that: lnste, clear, snappy sound, th hears a murmuring sounc may be a normal first sc a murmuring second one. muring first and a norm: sound, or both may be by murmurs. S, the "and The ntrac­Jf the to the ic and placed g doc­e heart 1urmur of a doctor There -id and a mur­second iplaced Physicians know that 1urmurs are produced by a variet of con­ditions, which, for the r st part, are related to the hea valves. Thus, murmurs are prod 1, d when the valves are too stiff , d sh ort t0 close, when the valv fail to close at the proper time, ,hen the surfaces of the valves a rough­ened so as to prevent tt smooth flow of blood over them or when the orifices which the \ Ives are meant to close are dil ed as a result of dilatation of 1e heart chamber of which they orm the entrance or exit. The p .sence of any of these conditions Jives rise to eddies in the blood ct .. ·rent, and these are directly respo 1sible for the murmur that the doctor hears. The full significance of these various murmurs was established by Dr. Corrigan. His accou�t ofaortic incompetence was entirely original, full of careful clinical ob· LINACRE QUARTERLY servation and thought. He gave a systematic account based on eleven cases, and he was rather optimistic in his opinion that such patients are not likely to die sud­denly. He advocated the use of digitalis, blood-letting and other depletory measures as indicated in the treatment of this heart condi­tion. Much thought was devoted to diseases of the valves and how they could be diagnosed and treat­ed. He discussed stenosis of the valves of the aorta which gave a slow pulse and found that when the valves failed to come together properly the pulse was "invariably full and swelling." Concerning treatment for dis­eases of the valves of the aorta. Dr. Corrigan said: A little re8ection on the nature of the clbrase before us will show that these principles ( general and local bleedings, ratrlcted diet, and digitalis) are inappli­cable both to the treatment of the valvu• lar alterations, · and of the hypertropy ol the left ventricle which accompanies lbat alteration. The physical condition requires hypertrophy and so we need ltrengthening of the general constitution, which will give proportional vigor to die heart. Hence, there should be gen­eal and sufficient diet of animal and �le food,· and at the same time lliatlnence from those beverages, such • malt liquors, which increase the mass of the 8uids. The patient may attend to llalness or profession, but should avoid ID much attention as to produce debility · , , And as there is among patients who � learned that they are afflicted with wvt disease a universal dread of sud­• death, it is necessary to undeceive diem oo this point; and in the present illtance It can be done with perfect safe­ty, aa the termination of the disease is ltver sudden. History tells us that Dominic Jolin Corrigan was born December I, 1802 in Dublin. The son of a IIOOr shopkeeper, his early educa-11.\v, 1961 tion. was obtained at MaynoL ·1. which then had a department l,,r secular students apart from t!,e ecclesiastical seminary. He was attracted to the study of medicine by the physician in attendance. After several years of medical study in Dublin, he followed the prevailing custom of the time and went to Edinburgh where he re­ceived his M.D. degree in 1825. After his return to Dublin, he was appointed physician to the J ervix Street Hospital. which had but six medical beds. During the next four years he studied certain forms of heart disease to such good purpose that he recast the teach­ing of diseases of the aortic valves. His article on "Permanent Patency of the Aortic Valves" appeared in the Edinburgh Medical and Sur­gical Journal for April, 1832. He was eminently successful as a teacher of medicine. In 1842, the London College of Surgeons con­ferred on him its diploma. In I 849 he received from the Univer­sity of Dublin the honorary degree of M.D. In 1866 he was made a baronet and was appointed Physi­cian-to-the-Queen in Ireland. He was known as a very hard­working physician, and his self­sacrificing devotion during the famine-fever years made him fam­ous. His "Lectures on Fevers" ( Dublin, 1853) are a valuable contribution to our knowledge of this subject. He was created a baronet partly as a reward for his services as Commissioner of Edu­cation for many years. Dr. Corri­gan was a member of Parliament in the Liberal interest for five years 57 after 1869. He was defeated for re-election in 1874, by the liquor interest which he had antagonized by supporting the Sunday Closing Bill. He was President of the Royal Zoological Society of Dub­lin, of the Dublin Pharmaceutical Society, and was five times elected President of the College of Physi-· cians in Dublin, an unprecedented honour. His work on heart disease denotes him as a great original investigator in medicine. Trous­seau, the French clinician, pro­posed that aortic heart disease be called Corrigan's disease. Although Dr. Corrigan was con­cerned with all phases of medicine, it was with diseases of the heart that he was most concerned. His special attention was directed tothe aorta, the largest artery of the body, as well as the heart. Diseases of the valves of the heart were associated with a va­riety of structural changes, Dr. Corrigan pointed out. This he recognized in cases in which "the valves may be tightened or curled against the sides of the aorta," cases in which the "valves with­out any proper lesion may be ren­dered inadequate to their function by the dilatation of the mouth of the aorta," and other.s in which "one· or more of the valves may be ruptured." The visible pulsation of the ar­teries of the head and arms and the murmur synchronous with the collapse of the arteries in the neck were graphically described by Dr. Corrigan. "In these cases in which the deficiency of the valves · is considerable, allowing a full 58 stream of blood to rush I: the ventricle, there is hea ascending aorta a dod . and in listening to sounds constituting thi� bruit de souff let, the in made distinctly on the e, the first sound is from a r blood up the aorta, th, from a rushing back into tricle. It is impossible to the distinctness with ,, impression described is the ear. Said Dr. ( "The heart in all cases occurred was enormously and its bulk arose from of the left ventricle." .k into in the bruit 1e two double I ression � is that hing of second 1e ven­onceive ch the ade on ,rrigan: 1at this nlarged 1e state Dr. Corrigan was th first to recognize the true signi' ance of enlargement of the he rt. "In such circumstances, n Jre, to enable the heart to pe orm the additional labor thrown n it, in­creases its strength by 1e addi­tion of muscular fiber ind the heart thus becomes hype rophied, in accordance with the g ·, 1eral law that muscular fiber beco1 ,:s thick­ened and strengthened v .. en there is additional power requ ,:ed from it. Is this hypertrophy c · ,ease, or is it a wise provision of i 1ture, by which the organ is thus rYJ ,de equal to the increased labor it is to per· form? On the answer de ,Jends the treatment to be adopte,i. and on this there is no room for hesitation. A heart of ordinary streHgth could not, under the circumstar;ces. carry on the circulation; and nature then wisely endows the hearl with the requisite degree of strength. It is at once obvious that to interfere with this wise provision of nature, to diminish the strength of the LINACRE QUARTERLY heart, or, if we choose other words, to direct, according to the advice of Laennec, Bertin, etc., our measures against the hyper­trophy of the organ, to deprive the system of the only power which enables the heart to carry on the circulation ... the repeated bleed­ings, the starvings, the enforce­ment of debilitating measures are totally unsuited to the disease we are considering." Sir Dominic John Corrigan was one of the great students of the heart. It was he who gave us among the first clear insights into the deformities of the valves of the heart, how they could be detected and how they should be tre" ·�d. He also told us why the heart . e­haves the way it does in he,lth and disease and how it should be managed properly. His name is immortalized in medical literature as the first to describe the Corri­gan pulse, a condition caused by an alteration in the valves of the aorta. He was one of the great heart healers. BIBLIOGRAPHY Robinson, Victor, The Story of Medicine, New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1931, pp. 375, 392. Herrick, James B., A Short History of Cardiology, Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, pp. 42, 112-14, 122-24-25-26 143-44. ' The Catholic Encyclopedia, p. 396. FE�ERATION EXECUTIVE BOARD MEETING SCHEDULED The Executive Board of the National Federation of Catholic Physicians' Guilds will hold its annual meeting June 28, I 961. Time: 11:00 a.m. Place: Hotel Commodore, New York City. The Officers of the national organization and one delegate from each active constituent Guild comprising the Board will conduct business. 59 

Sir Dominic Corrigan: Healer of Hearts

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Sir Dominic Corrigan: Healer of Hearts

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