The state of the peripheral circulatory system in infectious diseases

The state of blood circulation and the causes of its disorder, both in chronic and, in particular, in acute infectious diseases, have always been of great interest to both clinicians and pathologists. Since the time of Laennec, who first drew attention to the weakness of the heart muscles in those who died from febrile diseases and emphasized, like Louis, weakness and fragility of the heart muscle, they began to look for the causes of these disorders in the state of the heart muscles. A significant success in the study of diseases of the heart muscle in infectious diseases was the teaching of Virchow about parenchymal inflammation, confirmed by Böttcher for typhoid and Mosler for diphtheria. While these authors spoke only about parenchymal inflammation of the heart muscle, Hayem was able to establish under the same conditions also interstitial myocarditis, and later productive endoarteritis of the coronary vessels, which, causing vascular thrombosis, could be the cause of sudden death during typhoid.