Cardiopathy of Obesity — A Not-So-Victorian Disease

Abstract

The "fatty heart" (cor adiposum or adipositas cordis) was a very fashionable disease in the last century, and much ink was wasted on this topic in the textbooks of Covisart, Laennec, Stokes, Rokitansky, and others. Ever since Senac¹ described a patient who died suddenly because pericardiac layers of fat suffocated the heart, the evil reputation of the fatty heart has been well established. However, fatty heart remained a "wastebasket diagnosis" that comprised (as we realize now in retrospect) such heterogeneous disorders as ischemic heart disease, beer-drinker's heart, myocarditis, and perimyocardial fat infiltration. For many decades, "fatty heart" was a confusing . . .