Some Aspects of Myocardial Disease

The subject about w.hich I should like to talk to you this afternoon is one to which there has been devoted a great (leal of patient and diligent research, both clinical and pathological, not only in these islands, but perhaps to an even greater extent on the Continent of America. It appears to have been tacitly agreed that the word myocarditis slhould be restricted to purely inflammatory conditions and their sequelw, and that it should not include the degenerations, and the changes in heart-muscle which are thought to be the result of disease of the coronary vessels themselves. From a strictly etymological point of viewN this restricted application is open to criticism, because the suffix "itis" is (I am informed by my friend the Reverend Principal Davey, for I, like the XVicar of Wakefield, have very little Latin and less Greek) a Greek ending of femininle nouns ancd adjectives, and means belonging to or concerned with, as in ; yli-q 7'1 .:aiapEiTtS , the wooman belonging to Samaria.32 In Greek medicine it was used originally as an adjective with v'o-o,, the word for disease, and then this nouLn was left out and uncderstood, so that such words as arthritis and nephritis mean disease of the joints or (lisease of the kidneys, and etymologically there is no ground for taking the wzord as implying inflammation in particular. Nevertheless, this narrower connotation has its advantages, and it has obviously come to stay.