Diagnosis and Medical Treatment

was congenital in origin, with the remainder almost exclusively rheumatic. Recent surveys tell a very different story. Autopsy incidence. News tends to grow less impressive with every mile it travels, and local information is always more interesting than that from a distance. Fortunately, therefore, autopsy figures are available from local sources. With Professor Hewer's permission I have examined the post-mortem records at the Department of Pathology, relating to deaths at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, General Hospital, Children's Hospital and Southmead Hospital, over the last ten years. It must be appreciated that they are concerned not with a general, but with a hospital population, and one, moreover, with an obstetric bias. In 5,000 autopsies there were congenital anomalies of the heart in 108, roughly a proportion of one in fifty, or 2 per cent. * Papers read to the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society, with X-ray films to illustrate the conditions, on Wednesday, 9th May, 1951.