Cardiac pathology: Rheumatic heart disease: Aortic/mitral/tricuspid involvement

A 1943 autopsy specimen from a 27 year old found unconscious, frothing at the mouth, by the side of her bed. She was taken to hospital but died 2.5 hours later in congestive heart failure. Attacks of breathlessness and pulmonary oedema had been becoming more and more frequent for some ten months. She had had three attacksof classical rheumatic fever at the ages of seven, nine and fifteen years.