Published in:
01-01-2012 | Original Article
John Locke, “Rhickets” and the Cardiopulmonary Circulation
Author:
A. N. Williams
Published in:
Pediatric Cardiology
|
Issue 1/2012
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Excerpt
In 2009,
Pediatric Cardiology published a short article describing a postmortem examination performed June 1666 by physician/philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) on an 18-month-old child who was “dead of the Rhickets.” Although Locke attributed the death to rickets, his clear descriptions of the clinical history and postmortem findings are more consistent with a congenital cardiac malformation and Ebstein’s anomaly in addition to the rickets [
50]. This short article places this case in its historical context, a period during which the Galenic view of the cardiopulmonary circulation was overturned. …