[Read to the Section on Practice of Medicine and Physiology.]
Dr. Hendérson1, in 1832, first emitted the idea that the interval between the heart's impulse and the arterial rial pulse is prolonged in aortic insufficiency. Since him others, and among them the principal authorities on diseases of the heart, have accepted the view. Flint says “that it characterizes certain cases in which the regurgitation is excessive, is not to be denied2.” Walshe writes: “This retardation may, with care, be detected in many, but unquestionably not in all, cases of that disease. Possibly, where no morbid retardation can be discovered, the failure may depend not on its absence, but on its being carried to such extremes that the arterial pulse produced by one cardiac systole is nearly synchronous with the next3.” As late as 1877, M. Tripier, in a publication4, advocated the reality of this exaggerated delay of the pulse in