Acute pericarditis associated with serum sickness.

ALTHOUGH carditis has been described as a manifestation of serum sickness in man, reports of acute pericarditis are uncommon. Davidson1 described an increase in cardiac dullness in 72 per cent of 50 cases of serum sickness, with an average increase of 1 cm. in transverse diameter of the heart. No subjective or objective evidence of heart disease was found in any of these patients, and it was assumed that the cardiac enlargement resulted from edema of the muscular wall of the heart. Clark and Kaplan2 reported 2 cases with endocardial and myocardial lesions, without pericardial involvement, after antipneumococcus serum. Clark . . .