Medicine: My Heart Stood Still

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The poets and songwriters have always felt it. The doctors knew it too, but have just got around to proving it with scientific gadgetry. Emotional people who claim that "my heart skipped a beat," or "my heart stood still" are probably stating a literal fact. Last week Dr. Ian P. Stevenson of New York Hospital (and his associates) proved it by tracing the heart's action electrically on an electrocardiograph.

When the patients were hitched up to the electrocardiograph, the doctors deliberately stirred up their emotions. Examples: one patient developed a noticeable arrhythmia (irregular beating) when the doctor mentioned his in-laws; a woman patient's heart began skipping when the doctors referred to her illegitimate child; the same sort of extrasystoles (premature contractions of the heart) showed up on the electrocardiograph when they asked a 61-year-old spinster why she had never married.

Dr. Stevenson concluded that doctors should 1) look for emotional disturbances in all cases of irregular heartbeats, and 2) consider psychotherapy as another standard treatment for heart trouble.