The presence of eosinophils in the myocardium was first noted by Straubli1 in a guinea-pig with trichosis. Rindfleisch2 also recorded the condition in an acute interstitial myocarditis. Freund3 found eosinophil cells throughout the myocardium in high-grade blood eosinophilia following teniasis. And Wulffius,4 Tanaka5 and Liebman6 have described eosinophils in the myocardium after death from diphtheria.
So far as I know, recorded examples of eosinophil myocarditis are not described in American literature. The opportunity to obtain material from the Durand Hospital of the John McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases prompted me to search for these cells in the myocardium after death from acute infection.
In sections from various parts of the auricles, ventricles and the papillary muscles, stained with various blood dyes, eosinophils were found in seven of twenty-nine hearts of children that had died of diphtheria. I did not find eosinophil cells in the