Chairman Gibson: For a good many years, it seems to me, we have been hashing over the same old problems of rheumatic fever without making much progress in our knowledge of the disease. Recently, however, I think there are hopeful signs that we are learning a little bit more about rheumatic fever and will be a little better able to deal with it.
As you all know, rheumatic fever is a disease with many varied manifestations. Some cases are so outright that even a junior medical student could make a diagnosis; other cases are so obscure that at a given time and in a given case one is quite unable to make a definite diagnosis. Yet within a wide scope of variations it seems to me that rheumatic fever does show a definite group of phenomena which, by careful study, one can usually evaluate in the course of time and thereby determine whether rheumatic fever is present.
I felt we might best handle the subject by dividing our discussion on rheumatic fever into 4 parts: etiology, recognition, prevention and treatment. At this time I want to introduce to you Dr. Edward C. Lambert, who is my associate in this Round Table discussion. He is at the University of Buffalo Medical School in Pediatrics and in charge of the Cardiac Children's Clinic.
Dr. Edward C. Lambert, Buffalo: About 50 years ago Dr. Osler defined rheumatic fever as an acute noncontagious febrile infection depending on an unknown infectious agent, characterized by multiple arthritis and a special tendency to involve the heart.
