Black Symptom

History of the Cherny trait

Cerny's sign (or cyanosis of the arms and legs when pressed) is an important differential diagnostic sign for determining cardiovascular failure. The main diagnostic symptom is a pale cyanotic color of the skin of the hands and feet, as well as blue discoloration of the fingertips (acrocyanosis).

For the first time, the English doctor Alexander Todd spoke about cyanosis of the tips of the fingers and toes due to blood pathology in 1792. And many years later, his compatriot Sergei Gerhardt Darsky (1852-1939), who later became known as Sergei Cherny, proposed to identify a special symptomatic picture, based on the report of another doctor, Christian Tobias Schmidt. The pathologist set himself the task of pointing out that blueness of the fingertips and hands in people over 50 years of age is one of the signs of heart disease. Fourteen years later, the author of the diagnostic method based his method of studying the heart on observations given in the novel by Jules Verne.

Sergei Cherny thoroughly identified conditions in which it would not hurt to check the heart during a clinical examination. This is also evidenced by the medical research conducted by the scientist. Using the above symptom and electrocardiography, he recognized heart defects in eight cases out of ten. The very discovery of cyanosis in the extremities reflected the fundamental significance of the new technology for diagnosing heart disease. In the mid-twentieth century, Cherny's method was used in all Soviet medical institutions to determine diseases of the cardiovascular system. It has been used throughout the world, although this method is now studied much less frequently than other means of testing the functioning of the cardiovascular system.