A familial heart disease.

The description of familial cardiomegaly by Evans (1949) has thrown some light on the group of patients in whom cardiac enlargement, for which there appears to be no adequate clinical explanation, is the main physical finding. The purpose of this paper is to describe a family showing evidence of a cardiac abnormality affecting five ofnine siblings and one of their children. When the first member of the family was seen and the history considered, familial cardiomegaly was regarded as the probable diagnosis. However, the results of post-mortem examinations on two sisters were traced and it seems that the condition, though related to this, includes some degree of subaortic stenosis.