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If digitalis should, however, cause the heart to become more irritable, it is acting for harm, and should be stopped. One has but to refer to the enumerated causes of irregular heart action to determine the treatment. In that caused by extrasystole, the treatment has just been suggested.
The cause may be more or less functional and removable, such as tea, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, gastric indigestion and intestinal toxemia; or it may be due to functional disturbances of the heart, such as that due to what has been termed extrasystole, or to irregular ventricular contractions.
Extrasystoles causing arrhythmia give a more or less regularly intermittent pulse, while the examination of the heart discloses an imperfect beat or the extrasystole which is not transmitted or acted on by the ventricles, and hence the intermittency in the peripheral arteries. This condition may be due to some toxemia, nervous irritability, or some irritation in the heart muscle.
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