What Does Your Heart Tell You? A Reconceptualization of Functional Cardiac Symptoms in Finland (1940s–1980s)

What is it about?

By the World War II, symptoms such as chest pain, palpitations and breathlessness had been a frequent topic of military medicine. In the 1940s, Finnish medical professionals encountered hundreds of patients who suffered from these symptoms while no physiological cause could be found. After the World War II, Finnish citizens contacted medical professionals as well as wrote letters to a popular healthcare magazine in order to seek advice to chest pain, fatigue, breathlessness and other discomforting symptoms. By the 1960s, these symptoms were typically labelled as 'neurotic' or caused by psychological distress. This article shows how the research of stress and psychosomatic medicine convinced medical professionals that these so-called 'functional cardiac symptoms' were indeed caused by psychological reaction to life-experiences. Consequently, the significance of environment and the stress experienced by the patients became less important in understanding these symptoms, which also changed the way in which the complaints regarding heart symptoms were addressed. This article demonstrates how medical research and new theories drastically changed the meaning of a bodily experience of chest pain and palpitations.

Featured Image