My eldest sister succumbed to an oedema of the brain; my brother Nicholas died at 57 of _angina pectoris_.
Undoubtedly my cardiac heredity is a bad one. Already in my youth, I suffered from my heart. At 33 I had such cardiac pains that sometimes I had to rest after walking a few paces. At 34, I had much giddiness and a feeling of heaviness in the head. I could not read a few lines, a poster even, without a painful sensation. In 1881, during relapsing fever, I had severe cardiac intermittence, very fatiguing and only relieved by small doses of digitalin.
I afterwards had periodical attacks of intermittence but never any tachycardia, at least none that lasted more than a few seconds. A little tincture of strophanthus used to relieve me during intermittence. I ended by consulting Dr. Vaquez, but the treatment he prescribed gave me no relief. As I attributed my condition to poisoning by the toxins of intestinal microbes, I resolved to give up raw food and to purge myself now and then with Carabaña water. The success of this treatment was indisputable, and in 1897 the intermittence ceased. In the autumn of 1898 I was beginning to suffer from polyuria; I consulted Albaran, who counselled Contrexéville water, but this cure caused the appearance of _albumen_ in my urine. In 1898 I consulted Norden at Frankfort and Leube in Paris during the Exhibition of 1900. Neither found anything alarming. Norden had told me that I had _symptoms of arterio-sclerosis inherent to my age_ (53). I adopted a mixed diet; I took, regularly, sour milk prepared with cultures of the Bulgarian lactic bacillus, and, during some years, my health was quite satisfactory.
It was only after my journey to Russia in 1909 that a notable aggravation supervened. I felt acute pains in the chest, along the sternum, especially after eating or walking.
In 1911 the intermittence reappeared. In January 1911, I consulted Dr. Heitz in order to know whether I could undertake an expedition in the Kalmuk steppes, where hygienic conditions are very unfavourable. Dr. Heitz found my heart hypertrophied, some slight galloping noise, the blood-pressure (Pachon's apparatus) 17-16-15. He said, however, that I might undertake the journey, but added, "People die suddenly with less the matter than that with their hearts." The journey went well, though I suffered from frequent intermittence and pains along the sternum when I walked.