Telltale Hearts

When a man is healthy, the sound of his heartbeat is a solid, relatively high-pitched bong; when he is ill, it is a dullish, soggy boom. The highest heart sound is somewhere at the bottom of the range of a bass viol; the lowest is inaudible to human ears, even with a stethoscope. A delicate device to record these sounds on photographic film has been developed at Du Font's Haskell Laboratories by Dr. John Henry Foulger and Physicist Paul E. Smith Jr. The device consists of a microphone strapped to the chest, and a foot-long box with dials like a table radio.

Up to last week Dr. Foulger has tried the machine on about 100 workers, found it a very sensitive indicator of such borderline illnesses as an incipient cold, a run-down condition, a morning after. The machine's chief use in industry is to detect poor working conditions. When all the hearts in a department give out low booms, something is wrong--e.g., slow escape of gas, poisonous chemicals, overwork.

In Industrial Medicine, Researchers Foulger and Smith explained how the heart, without being diseased itself, quickly reflects changes in circulation caused by poisons, poor nutrition, anemia, fatigue, etc. Any one of these factors can start a vicious circle by lowering muscle tone throughout the body, thus impairing the return of blood to the heart. With less blood to pump, the muscles of the left side of the heart lose some of their oomph and sour notes result. The poor heart action adds to that tired feeling, contributes to the slow return of blood.

The researchers recorded heart sounds both before & after mild exercise. After exercise, they found, a heart's pitch normally goes up (irrespective of its rhythm), returns to normal in about five minutes. When, after exercise, the pitch 1) goes very high and takes a long time to come down, 2) does not change, or 3) goes down, Dr. Foulger looks for trouble. He usually finds it.

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