Editorial note — Chapter VII · The Blood and Its Circulation.

Note. “An alcoholic heart loses its contractile and resisting power, both through morbid changes in its nerve ganglia and in its muscle fibers. In typhoid fever, muscle changes are evidently the cause of the heart-enfeeblement; while in diphtheria, disturbances in innervation cause the heart insufficiency. ‘If the habitual use of alcohol causes the loss of contractile and resisting power by impairment of both the nerve ganglia and muscle fibers of the heart, how can it act as a heart tonic?’”—Dr. Alfred L. Loomis, Professor of Medicine in the Medical Department of the University of the City of New York.