Studies of the Circulation in Three Cases of Morbus Caeruleus.

Studies on the anatomical peculiarities of congenital cardiac disease, with explanations of their embryonic development, have been comparatively common. Attention has been focused upon the numerous deviations from the normal which may occur as a developmental anomaly, but comparatively few studies have been made upon the functional disturbance of the circulation. Further, little or no attention has been paid to those means of physiological compensation and adaptation which would necessarily have to occur in order to maintain life. There has been the well-known differentiation into two broad classes,the cyanotic and non-cyanotic groups. The circulatory problems underlying the latter are but little different from those which occur in acquired cardiac disease. On the other hand, in Morbus Caeruleus (the cyanotic type of a case) a number of questions of great physiological importance arise. The present communication deals with three such cases all of which have been studied in more or less complete detail.