Some people naturally have rapid hearts, and there are others who naturally have slow hearts. This is told by the profession, and laymen will readily believe that it is possible. Where the range is below sixty-four pulse-beats to the minute, or above seventy-eight, regularly day after day, there is a cause for it; it is not natural, but pathological. Where the pulse drops below the normal it is due to obstruction of the circulation, and also to abuse of the digestion and assimilation. This is one of the symptoms of excessive venery in youth, to self-abuse. This depressed condition, or slow heart-beat, may first be preceded by a too rapid heart; for over-stimulation and shocks of all kinds will first send the heart flying. Then, as the organism becomes accustomed to the abuse, the heart requires more and more stimulation to keep it at its high rate of speed; and as there is possibility of a falling-off of the exciting cause from many reasons, it would be perfectly natural for the heart to go below the normal, and continue below the normal until there has been a readjustment and a reorganizing of nerve impulses--until the enervation has been overcome and nerve resistance established.

Violent exercise and fever produce rapid heart action. A continuous state of fear will develop rapid action of the heart. Brain tumors, blood clots on the brain, etc., causing pressure on the nerves of the heart, will cause rapid heart action. Ovarian irritation and uterine diseases frequently cause rapid heart action. But beyond and back of these symptoms are indigestion and more or less emotionalism. Rapid heart action oftener comes from chronic irritation of the stomach than from any other cause. The irritation may be caused by acid fermentation of foods, coffee, tobacco, alcoholics, etc. We cannot have irritation of the stomach without a cause; hence where there is irritation of the stomach, causing rapid heart action, it must be considered that the stomach is only a go-between which passes on the effect from other causes.