The History of Mitral Stenosis.

The early observations on mitral stenosis were largely made in France and Britain, and in the past its clinical diagnosis was probably more discussed than that of any other form of valvular disease of the heart. As the study of morbid anatomy is much older than the practice of auscultation, the lesion of mitral stenosis was described more than a hundred and fifty years before its clinical recognition received the help of auscultation. Extreme constriction of the mitral orifice in a young man was recorded in 1668 by John Mayow (1640-1679), an Oxford physiologist contemporary with Richard Lower (1631-1691), whose Tractatus de corde appeared in 1669. The morbid change in a case was more fully reported in 1715 by another contemporary, Raymond de Vieussens (1641-1715) of Montpellier, with an illustration of the mitral valve, reproduced in Major's Classic Descriptions of Disease. Morgagni (1682-1771) also recorded the lesion in 1761, under the title " ossification of the mitral valve."