Bjornstjerne Bjornson - "Poems and Songs"

Plato - "Laws"

Louisa May Alcott - "Little Women"

Holman Day - "All Wool Morrison"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Harvard Classics Volume 38

V >> Various >> The Harvard Classics Volume 38




But in some of the pale-blooded and colder animals, as in snails,
whelks, shrimps, and shell-fish, there is a part which pulsates,
--a kind of vesicle or auricle without a heart,--slowly, indeed,
and not to be perceived except in the warmer season of the year.
In these creatures this part is so contrived that it shall
pulsate, as there is here a necessity for some impulse to
distribute the nutritive fluid, by reason of the variety of
organic parts, or of the density of the substance; but the
pulsations occur unfrequently, and sometimes in consequence of
the cold not at all, an arrangement the best adapted to them as
being of a doubtful nature, so that sometimes they appear to
live, sometimes to die; sometimes they show the vitality of an
animal, sometimes of a vegetable. This seems also to be the case
with the insects which conceal themselves in winter, and lie, as
it were, defunct, or merely manifesting a kind of vegetative
existence. But whether the same thing happens in the case of
certain animals that have red blood, such as frogs, tortoises,
serpents, swallows, may be very properly doubted.

In all the larger and warmer animals which have red blood, there
was need of an impeller of the nutritive fluid, and that,
perchance, possessing a considerable amount of power. In fishes,
serpents, lizards, tortoises, frogs, and others of the same kind
there is a heart present, furnished with both an auricle and a
ventricle, whence it is perfectly true, as Aristotle has
observed, [Footnote: De Part. Animal., lib. iii.] that no
sanguineous animal is without a heart, by the impelling power of
which the nutritive fluid is forced, both with greater vigour and
rapidity, to a greater distance; and not merely agitated by an
auricle, as it Is in lower forms. And then in regard to animals
that are yet larger, warmer, and more perfect, as they abound in
blood, which is always hotter and more spirituous, and which
possess bodies of greater size and consistency, these require a
larger, stronger, and more fleshy heart, in order that the
nutritive fluid may be propelled with yet greater force and
celerity. And further, inasmuch as the more perfect animals
require a still more perfect nutrition, and a larger supply of
native heat, in order that the aliment may be thoroughly
concocted and acquire the last degree of perfection, they
required both lungs and a second ventricle, which should force
the nutritive fluid through them.

Every animal that has lungs has, therefore, two ventricles to its
heart--one right, the other left; and wherever there is a right,
there also is there a left ventricle; but the contrary of this
does not hold good: where there is a left there is not always a
right ventricle. The left ventricle I call that which is distinct
in office, not in place from the other, that one, namely, which
distributes the blood to the body at large, not to the lungs
only. Hence the left ventricle seems to form the principle part
of the heart; situated in the middle, more strongly marked, and
constructed with greater care, the heart seems formed for the
sake of the left ventricle, and the right but to minister to it.
The right neither reaches to the apex of the heart nor is it
nearly of such strength, being three times thinner in its walls,
and in some sort jointed on to the left (as Aristotle says),
though, indeed, it is of greater capacity, inasmuch as it has not
only to supply material to the left ventricle, but likewise to
furnish aliment to the lungs.

It is to be observed, however, that all this is otherwise in the
embryo, where there is not such a difference between the two
ventricles. There, as in a double nut, they are nearly equal in
all respects, the apex of the right reaching to the apex of the
left, so that the heart presents itself as a sort of double-
pointed cone. And this is so, because in the foetus, as already
said, whilst the blood is not passing through the lungs from the
right to the left cavities of the heart, it flows by the foramen
ovale and ductus arteriosus directly from the vena cava into the
aorta, whence it is distributed to the whole body. Both
ventricles have, therefore, the same office to perform, whence
their equality of constitution. It is only when the lungs come to
be used and it is requisite that the passages indicated should be
blocked up that the difference in point of strength and other
things between the two ventricles begins to be apparent. In the
altered circumstances the right has only to drive the blood
through the lungs, whilst the left has to propel it through the
whole body.

There are, moreover, within the heart numerous braces, in the
form of fleshy columns and fibrous bands, which Aristotle, in his
third book on "Respiration," and the "Parts of Animals," entitles
nerves. These are variously extended, and are either distinct or
contained in grooves in the walls and partition, where they
occasion numerous pits or depressions. They constitute a kind of
small muscles, which are superadded and supplementary to the
heart, assisting it to execute a more powerful and perfect
contraction, and so proving subservient to the complete expulsion
of the blood. They are, in some sort, like the elaborate and
artful arrangement of ropes in a ship, bracing the heart on every
side as it contracts, and so enabling it more effectually and
forcibly to expel the charge of blood from its ventricles. This
much is plain, at all events, that in some animals they are less
strongly marked than in others; and, in all that have them, they
are more numerous and stronger in the left than in the right
ventricle; and while some have them present in the left, yet they
are absent in the right ventricle. In man they are more numerous
in the left than in the right ventricle, more abundant in the
ventricles than in the auricles; and occasionally there appear to
be none present in the auricles. They are numerous in the large,
more muscular and hardier bodies of countrymen, but fewer in more
slender frames and in females.

In those animals in which the ventricles of the heart are smooth
within and entirely without fibres of muscular bands, or anything
like hollow pits, as in almost all the smaller birds, the
partridge and the common fowl, serpents, frogs, tortoises, and
most fishes, there are no chordae tendineae, nor bundles of
fibres, neither are there any tricuspid valves in the ventricles.

Some animals have the right ventricle smooth internally, but the
left provided with fibrous bands, such as the goose, swan, and
larger birds; and the reason is the same here as elsewhere. As
the lungs are spongy and loose and soft, no great amount of force
is required to force the blood through them; therefore the right
ventricle is either without the bundles in question, or they are
fewer and weaker, and not so fleshy or like muscles. Those of the
left ventricle, however, are both stronger and more numerous,
more fleshy and muscular, because the left ventricle requires to
be stronger, inasmuch as the blood which it propels has to be
driven through the whole body. And this, too, is the reason why
the left ventricle occupies the middle of the heart, and has
parietes three times thicker and stronger than those of the right
Hence all animals--and among men it is similar--that are endowed
with particularly strong frames, and with large and fleshy limbs
at a great distance from the heart, have this central organ of
greater thickness, strength, and muscularity. This is manifest
and necessary. Those, on the contrary, that are of softer and
more slender make have the heart more flaccid, softer, and
internally either less or not at all fibrous. Consider, farther,
the use of the several valves, which are all so arranged that the
blood, once received into the ventricles of the heart, shall
never regurgitate; once forced into the pulmonary artery and
aorta, shall not flow back upon the ventricles. When the valves
are raised and brought together, they form a three-cornered line,
such as is left by the bite of a leech; and the more they are
forced, the more firmly do they oppose the passage of the blood.
The tricuspid valves are placed, like gate-keepers, at the
entrance into the ventricles from the venae cavae and pulmonary
veins, lest the blood when most forcibly impelled should flow
back. It is for this reason that they are not found in all
animals, nor do they appear to have been constructed with equal
care, in all animals in which they are found. In some they are
more accurately fitted, in others more remissly or carelessly
contrived, and always with a view to their being closed under a
greater or a slighter force of the ventricle. In the left
ventricle, therefore, in order that the occlusion may be the more
perfect against the greater impulse, there are only two valves,
like a mitre, and produced into an elongated cone, so that they
come together and touch to their middle; a circumstance which
perhaps led Aristotle into the error of supposing this ventricle
to be double, the division taking place transversely. For the
same reason, and that the blood may not regurgitate upon the
pulmonary veins, and thus the force of the ventricle in
propelling the blood through the system at large come to be
neutralized, it is that these mitral valves excel those of the
right ventricle in size and strength and exactness of closing.
Hence it is essential that there can be no heart without a
ventricle, since this must be the source and store-house of the
blood. The same law does not hold good in reference to the brain.
For almost no genus of birds has a ventricle in the brain, as is
obvious in the goose and swan, the brains of which nearly equal
that of a rabbit in size; now rabbits have ventricles in the
brain, whilst the goose has none. In like manner, wherever the
heart has a single ventricle, there is an auricle appended,
flaccid, membranous, hollow, filled with blood; and where there
are two ventricles, there are likewise two auricles. On the other
hand, some animals have an auricle without any ventricle; or, at
all events, they have a sac analogous to an auricle; or the vein
itself, dilated at a particular part, performs pulsations, as is
seen in hornets, bees, and other insects, which certain
experiments of my own enable me to demonstrate, have not only a
pulse, but a respiration in that part which is called the tail,
whence it is that this part is elongated and contracted now more
rarely, now more frequently, as the creature appears to be blown
and to require a large quantity of air. But of these things, more
in our "Treatise On Respiration."

It is in like manner evident that the auricles pulsate, contract,
as I have said before, and throw the blood into the ventricles;
so that wherever there is a ventricle, an auricle is necessary,
not merely that it may serve, according to the general belief, as
a source and magazine for the blood: for what were the use of its
pulsations had it only to contain?

The auricles are prime movers of the blood, especially the right
auricle, which, as already said, is "the first to live, the last
to die"; whence they are subservient to sending the blood into
the ventricles, which, contracting continuously, more readily and
forcibly expel the blood already in motion; just as the ball-
player can strike the ball more forcibly and further if he takes
it on the rebound than if he simply threw it. Moreover, and
contrary to the general opinion, neither the heart nor anything
else can dilate or distend itself so as to draw anything into its
cavity during the diastole, unless, like a sponge, it has been
first compressed and is returning to its primary condition. But
in animals all local motion proceeds from, and has its origin in,
the contraction of some part; consequently it is by the
contraction of the auricles that the blood is thrown into the
ventricles, as I have already shown, and from there, by the
contraction of the ventricles, it is propelled and distributed.
Concerning local motions, it is true that the immediate moving
organ in every motion of an animal primarily endowed with a
motive spirit (as Aristotle has it [Footnote: In the book de
Spiritu, and elsewhere.]) is contractile; in which way the word
veopou is derived from veuw, nuto, contraho; and if I am
permitted to proceed in my purpose of making a particular
demonstration of the organs of motion in animals from
observations in my possession, I trust I shall be able to make
sufficiently plain how Aristotle was acquainted with the muscles,
and advisedly referred all motion in animals to the nerves, or to
the contractile element, and, therefore, called those little
bands in the heart nerves.

But that we may proceed with the subject which we have in hand,
viz., the use of the auricles in filling the ventricles, we
should expect that the more dense and compact the heart, the
thicker its parietes, the stronger and more muscular must be the
auricle to force and fill it, and vice versa. Now this is
actually so: in some the auricle presents itself as a
sanguinolent vesicle, as a thin membrane containing blood, as in
fishes, in which the sac that stands in lieu of the auricles is
of such delicacy and ample capacity that it seems to be suspended
or to float above the heart. In those fishes in which the sac is
somewhat more fleshy, as in the carp, barbel, tench, and others,
it bears a wonderful and strong resemblance to the lungs.

In some men of sturdier frame and stouter make the right auricle
is so strong, and so curiously constructed on its inner surface
of bands and variously interlacing fibres, that it seems to equal
in strength the ventricle of the heart in other subjects; and I
must say that I am astonished to find such diversity in this
particular in different individuals. It is to be observed,
however, that in the foetus the auricles are out of all
proportion large, which is because they are present before the
heart makes its appearance or suffices for its office even when
it has appeared, and they, therefore, have, as it were, the duty
of the whole heart committed to them, as has already been
demonstrated. But what I have observed in the formation of the
foetus, as before remarked (and Aristotle had already confirmed
all in studying the incubated egg), throws the greatest light and
likelihood upon the point. Whilst the foetus is yet in the form
of a soft worm, or, as is commonly said, in the milk, there is a
mere bloody point or pulsating vesicle, a portion apparently of
the umbilical vein, dilated at its commencement or base.
Afterwards, when the outline of the foetus is distinctly
indicated and it begins to have greater bodily consistence, the
vesicle in question becomes more fleshy and stronger, changes its
position, and passes into the auricles, above which the body of
the heart begins to sprout, though as yet it apparently performs
no office. When the foetus is farther advanced, when the bones
can be distinguished from the fleshy parts and movements take
place, then it also has a heart which pulsates, and, as I have
said, throws blood by either ventricle from the vena cava into
the arteries.

Thus nature, ever perfect and divine, doing nothing in vain, has
neither given a heart where it was not required, nor produced it
before its office had become necessary; but by the same stages in
the development of every animal, passing through the forms of
all, as I may say (ovum, worm, foetus), it acquires perfection in
each. These points will be found elsewhere confirmed by numerous
observations on the formation of the foetus.

Finally, it is not without good grounds that Hippocrates in his
book, "De Corde," entitles it a muscle; its action is the same;
so is its functions, viz., to contract and move something else--
in this case the charge of the blood.

Farther, we can infer the action and use of the heart from the
arrangement of its fibres and its general structures, as in
muscles generally. All anatomists admit with Galen that the body
of the heart is made up of various courses of fibres running
straight, obliquely, and transversely, with reference to one
another; but in a heart which has been boiled, the arrangement of
the fibres is seen to be different. All the fibres in the
parietes and septum are circular, as in the sphincters; those,
again, which are in the columns extend lengthwise, and are
oblique longitudinally; and so it comes to pass that when all the
fibres contract simultaneously, the apex of the cone is pulled
towards its base by the columns, the walls are drawn circularly
together into a globe--the whole heart, in short, is contracted
and the ventricles narrowed. It is, therefore, impossible not to
perceive that, as the action of the organ is so plainly
contraction, its function is to propel the blood into the
arteries.

Nor are we the less to agree with Aristotle in regard to the
importance of the heart, or to question if it receives sense and
motion from the brain, blood from the liver, or whether it be the
origin of the veins and of the blood, and such like. They who
affirm these propositions overlook, or do not rightly understand,
the principal argument, to the effect that the heart is the first
part which exists, and that it contains within itself blood,
life, sensation, and motion, before either the brain or the liver
were created or had appeared distinctly, or, at all events,
before they could perform any function. The heart, ready
furnished with its proper organs of motion, like a kind of
internal creature, existed before the body. The first to be
formed, nature willed that it should afterwards fashion, nourish,
preserve, complete the entire animal, as its work and dwelling-
place: and as the prince in a kingdom, in whose hands lie the
chief and highest authority, rules over all, the heart is the
source and foundation from which all power is derived, on which
all power depends in the animal body.

Many things having reference to the arteries farther illustrate
and confirm this truth. Why does not the pulmonary vein pulsate,
seeing that it is numbered among the arteries? Or wherefore is
there a pulse in the pulmonary artery? Because the pulse of the
arteries is derived from the impulse of the blood. Why does an
artery differ so much from a vein in the thickness and strength
of its coats? Because it sustains the shock of the impelling
heart and streaming blood. Hence, as perfect nature does nothing
in vain, and suffices under all circumstances, we find that the
nearer the arteries are to the heart, the more do they differ
from the veins in structure; here they are both stronger and more
ligamentous, whilst in extreme parts of the body, such as the
feet and hands, the brain, the mesentery, and the testicles, the
two orders of vessels are so much alike that it is impossible to
distinguish between them with the eye. Now this is for the
following very sufficient reasons: the more remote the vessels
are from the heart, with so much the less force are they
distended by the stroke of the heart, which is broken by the
great distance at which it is given. Add to this that the impulse
of the heart exerted upon the mass of blood, which must needs
fill the trunks and branches of the arteries, is diverted,
divided, as it were, and diminished at every subdivision, so that
the ultimate capillary divisions of the arteries look like veins,
and this not merely in constitution, but in function. They have
either no perceptible pulse, or they rarely exhibit one, and
never except where the heart beats more violently than usual, or
at a part where the minute vessel is more dilated or open than
elsewhere. It, therefore, happens that at times we are aware of a
pulse in the teeth, in inflammatory tumours, and in the fingers;
at another time we feel nothing of the sort. By this single
symptom I have ascertained for certain that young persons whose
pulses are naturally rapid were labouring under fever; and in
like manner, on compressing the fingers in youthful and delicate
subjects during a febrile paroxysm, I have readily perceived the
pulse there. On the other hand, when the heart pulsates more
languidly, it is often impossible to feel the pulse not merely in
the fingers, but the wrist, and even at the temple, as in persons
afflicted with lipothymiae asphyxia, or hysterical symptoms, and
in the debilitated and moribund.

Here surgeons are to be advised that, when the blood escapes with
force in the amputation of limbs, in the removal of tumours, and
in wounds, it constantly comes from an artery; not always indeed
per saltum, because the smaller arteries do not pulsate,
especially if a tourniquet has been applied.

For the same reason the pulmonary artery not only has the
structure of an artery, but it does not differ so widely from the
veins in the thickness of its walls as does the aorta. The aorta
sustains a more powerful shock from the left than the pulmonary
artery does from the right ventricle, and the walls of this last
vessel are thinner and softer than those of the aorta in the same
proportion as the walls of the right ventricle of the heart are
weaker and thinner than those of the left ventricle. In like
manner the lungs are softer and laxer in structure than the flesh
and other constituents of the body, and in a similar way the
walls of the branches of the pulmonary artery differ from those
of the vessels derived from the aorta. And the same proportion in
these particulars is universally preserved. The more muscular and
powerful men are, the firmer their flesh; the stronger, thicker,
denser, and more fibrous their hearts, the thicker, closer, and
stronger are the auricles and arteries. Again, in those animals
the ventricles of whose hearts are smooth on their inner surface,
without villi or valves, and the walls of which are thin, as in
fishes, serpents, birds, and very many genera of animals, the
arteries differ little or nothing in the thickness of their coats
from the veins.

Moreover, the reason why the lungs have such ample vessels, both
arteries and veins (for the capacity of the pulmonary veins
exceeds that of both crural and jugular vessels), and why they
contain so large a quantity of blood, as by experience and ocular
inspection we know they do, admonished of the fact indeed by
Aristotle, and not led into error by the appearances found in
animals which have been bled to death, is, because the blood has
its fountain, and storehouse, and the workshop of its last
perfection, in the heart and lungs. Why, in the same way, we find
in the course of our anatomical dissections the pulmonary vein
and left ventricle so full of blood, of the same black colour and
clotted character as that with which the right ventricle and
pulmonary artery are filled, is because the blood is incessantly
passing from one side of the heart to the other through the
lungs. Wherefore, in fine, the pulmonary artery has the structure
of an artery, and the pulmonary veins have the structure of
veins. In function and constitution and everything else the first
is an artery, the others are veins, contrary to what is commonly
believed; and the reason why the pulmonary artery has so large an
orifice is because it transports much more blood than is
requisite for the nutrition of the lungs.

All these appearances, and many others, to be noted in the course
of dissection, if rightly weighed, seem clearly to illustrate and
fully to confirm the truth contended for throughout these pages,
and at the same time to oppose the vulgar opinion; for it would
be very difficult to explain in any other way to what purpose all
is constructed and arranged as we have seen it to be.




THE THREE ORIGINAL PUBLICATIONS ON VACCINATION AGAINST SMALLPOX
BY EDWARD JENNER


INTRODUCTORY NOTE


Edward Jenner was born at his father's vicarage at Berkeley,
Gloucestershire, England, on May 17, 1749. After leaving school,
he was apprenticed to a local surgeon, and in 1770 he went to
London and became a resident pupil under the great surgeon and
anatomist, John Hunter, with whom he remained on intimate terms
for the rest of Hunter's life. In 1773 he took up practise at
Berkeley, where, except for numerous visits to London, he spent
the rest of his life. He died of apoplexy on January 26, 1823.

Jenner's scientific interests were varied, but the importance of
his work in vaccination has overshadowed his other results. Early
in his career he had begun to observe the phenomena of cowpox, a
disease common in the rural parts of the western counties of
England, and he was familiar with the belief, current among the
peasantry, that a person who had suffered from the cowpox could
not take smallpox. Finally, in 1796, he made his first experiment
in vaccination, inoculating a boy of eight with cowpox, and,
after his recovery, with smallpox; with the result that the boy
did not take the latter disease.

Jenner's first paper on his discovery was never printed; but in
1798 appeared the first of the following treatises. Its reception
by the medical profession was highly discouraging; but progress
began when Cline, the surgeon of St. Thomas's Hospital, used the
treatment with success. Jenner continued his investigations,
publishing his results from time to time, and gradually gaining
recognition; though opposition to his theory and practise was at
first vehement, and has never entirely disappeared. In 1802,
Parliament voted him 10,000 pounds, and in 1806, 20,000 pounds, in
recognition of the value of his services, and the sacrifices they
had entailed. As early as 1807, Bavaria made vaccination
compulsory; and since that date most of the European governments
have officially encouraged or compelled the practise; and
smallpox has ceased to be the almost universal scourge it was
before Jenner's discovery.