Emile Souvestre - "An Attic Philosopher, v3"

Mary Johnston - "Pioneers of the Old South, A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings"

Frank V. Webster - "The Young Firemen of Lakeville"

Julian Hawthorne - "Hawthorne and His Circle"

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Books: The Harvard Classics Volume 38

V >> Various >> The Harvard Classics Volume 38




I have also observed the first rudiments of the chick in the
course of the fourth or fifth day of the incubation, in the guise
of a little cloud, the shell having been removed and the egg
immersed in clear tepid water. In the midst of the cloudlet in
question there was a bloody point so small that it disappeared
during the contraction and escaped the sight, but in the
relaxation it reappeared again, red and like the point of a pin;
so that betwixt the visible and invisible, betwixt being and not
being, as it were, it gave by its pulses a kind of representation
of the commencement of life.




CHAPTER V

OF THE MOTION, ACTION AND OFFICE OF THE HEART


From these and other observations of a similar nature, I am
persuaded it will be found that the motion of the heart is as
follows:

First of all, the auricle contracts, and in the course of its
contraction forces the blood (which it contains in ample quantity
as the head of the veins, the store--house and cistern of the
blood) into the ventricle, which, being filled, the heart raises
itself straightway, makes all its fibres tense, contracts the
ventricles, and performs a beat, by which beat it immediately
sends the blood supplied to it by the auricle into the arteries.
The right ventricle sends its charge into the lungs by the vessel
which is called vena arteriosa, but which in structure and
function, and all other respects, is an artery. The left
ventricle sends its charge into the aorta, and through this by
the arteries to the body at large.

These two motions, one of the ventricles, the other of the
auricles, take place consecutively, but in such a manner that
there is a kind of harmony or rhythm preserved between them, the
two concurring in such wise that but one motion is apparent,
especially in the warmer blooded animals, in which the movements
in question are rapid. Nor is this for any other reason than it
is in a piece of machinery, in which, though one wheel gives
motion to another, yet all the wheels seem to move
simultaneously; or in that mechanical contrivance which is
adapted to firearms, where, the trigger being touched, down comes
the flint, strikes against the steel, elicits a spark, which
falling among the powder, ignites it, when the flame extends,
enters the barrel, causes the explosion, propels the ball, and
the mark is attained--all of which incidents, by reason of the
celerity with which they happen, seem to take place in the
twinkling of an eye. So also in deglutition: by the elevation of
the root of the tongue, and the compression of the mouth, the
food or drink is pushed into the fauces, when the larynx is
closed by its muscles and by the epiglottis. The pharynx is then
raised and opened by its muscles in the same way as a sac that is
to be filled is lifted up and its mouth dilated. Upon the
mouthful being received, it is forced downwards by the transverse
muscles, and then carried farther by the longitudinal ones. Yet
all these motions, though executed by different and distinct
organs, are performed harmoniously, and in such order that they
seem to constitute but a single motion and act, which we call
deglutition.

Even so does it come to pass with the motions and action of the
heart, which constitute a kind of deglutition, a transfusion of
the blood from the veins to the arteries. And if anyone, bearing
these things in mind, will carefully watch the motions of the
heart in the body of a living animal, he will perceive not only
all the particulars I have mentioned, viz., the heart becoming
erect, and making one continuous motion with its auricles; but
farther, a certain obscure undulation and lateral inclination in
the direction of the axis of the right ventricle, as if twisting
itself slightly in performing its work. And indeed everyone may
see, when a horse drinks, that the water is drawn in and
transmitted to the stomach at each movement of the throat, which
movement produces a sound and yields a pulse both to the ear and
the touch; in the same way it is with each motion of the heart,
when there is the delivery of a quantity of blood from the veins
to the arteries a pulse takes place, and can be heard within the
chest.

The motion of the heart, then, is entirely of this description,
and the one action of the heart is the transmission of the blood
and its distribution, by means of the arteries, to the very
extremities of the body; so that the pulse which we feel in the
arteries is nothing more than the impulse of the blood derived
from the heart.

Whether or not the heart, besides propelling the blood, giving it
motion locally, and distributing it to the body, adds anything
else to it--heat, spirit, perfection,--must be inquired into by--
and--by, and decided upon other grounds. So much may suffice at
this time, when it is shown that by the action of the heart the
blood is transfused through the ventricles from the veins to the
arteries, and distributed by them to all parts of the body.

The above, indeed, is admitted by all, both from the structure of
the heart and the arrangement and action of its valves. But still
they are like persons purblind or groping about in the dark, for
they give utterance to various, contradictory, and incoherent
sentiments, delivering many things upon conjecture, as we have
already shown.

The grand cause of doubt and error in this subject appears to me
to have been the intimate connexion between the heart and the
lungs. When men saw both the pulmonary artery and the pulmonary
veins losing themselves in the lungs, of course it became a
puzzle to them to know how or by what means the right ventricle
should distribute the blood to the body, or the left draw it from
the venae cavae. This fact is borne witness to by Galen, whose
words, when writing against Erasistratus in regard to the origin
and use of the veins and the coction of the blood, are the
following [Footnote: De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, vi.]:
"You will reply," he says, "that the effect is so; that the blood
is prepared in the liver, and is thence transferred to the heart
to receive its proper form and last perfection; a statement which
does not appear devoid of reason; for no great and perfect work
is ever accomplished at a single effort, or receives its final
polish from one instrument. But if this be actually so, then show
us another vessel which draws the absolutely perfect blood from
the heart, and distributes it as the arteries do the spirits over
the whole body." Here then is a reasonable opinion not allowed,
because, forsooth, besides not seeing the true means of transit,
he could not discover the vessel which should transmit the blood
from the heart to the body at large!

But had anyone been there in behalf of Erasistratus, and of that
opinion which we now espouse, and which Galen himself
acknowledges in other respects consonant with reason, to have
pointed to the aorta as the vessel which distributes the blood
from the heart to the rest of the body, I wonder what would have
been the answer of that most ingenious and learned man? Had he
said that the artery transmits spirits and not blood, he would
indeed sufficiently have answered Erasistratus, who imagined that
the arteries contained nothing but spirits; but then he would
have contradicted himself, and given a foul denial to that for
which he had keenly contended in his writings against this very
Erasistratus, to wit, that blood in substance is contained in the
arteries, and not spirits; a fact which he demonstrated not only
by many powerful arguments, but by experiments.

But if the divine Galen will here allow, as in other places he
does, "that all the arteries of the body arise from the great
artery, and that this takes its origin from the heart; that all
these vessels naturally contain and carry blood; that the three
semilunar valves situated at the orifice of the aorta prevent the
return of the blood into the heart, and that nature never
connected them with this, the most noble viscus of the body,
unless for some important end"; if, I say, this father of
physicians concedes all these things,--and I quote his own
words,--I do not see how he can deny that the great artery is the
very vessel to carry the blood, when it has attained its highest
term for term of perfection, from the heart for distribution to
all parts of the body. Or would he perchance still hesitate, like
all who have come after him, even to the present hour, because he
did not perceive the route by which the blood was transferred
from the veins to the arteries, in consequence, as I have already
said, of the intimate connexion between the heart and the lungs?
And that this difficulty puzzled anatomists not a little, when in
their dissections they found the pulmonary artery and left
ventricle full of thick, black, and clotted blood, plainly
appears, when they felt themselves compelled to affirm that the
blood made its way from the right to the left ventricle by
transuding through the septum of the heart. But this fancy I
have already refuted. A new pathway for the blood must therefore
be prepared and thrown open, and being once exposed, no further
difficulty will, I believe, be experienced by anyone in admitting
what I have already proposed in regard to the pulse of the heart
and arteries, viz., the passage of the blood from the veins to
the arteries, and its distribution to the whole of the body by
means of these vessels.




CHAPTER VI

OF THE COURSE BY WHICH THE BLOOD IS CARRIED FROM THE VENA CAVA
INTO THE ARTERIES, OR FROM THE RIGHT INTO THE LEFT VENTRICLE OF
THE HEART


Since the intimate connexion of the heart with the lungs, which
is apparent in the human subject, has been the probable cause of
the errors that have been committed on this point, they plainly
do amiss who, pretending to speak of the parts of animals
generally, as anatomists for the most part do, confine their
researches to the human body alone, and that when it is dead.
They obviously do not act otherwise than he who, having studied
the forms of a single commonwealth, should set about the
composition of a general system of polity; or who, having taken
cognizance of the nature of a single field, should imagine that
he had mastered the science of agriculture; or who, upon the
ground of one particular proposition, should proceed to draw
general conclusions.

Had anatomists only been as conversant with the dissection of the
lower animals as they are with that of the human body, the
matters that have hitherto kept them in a perplexity of doubt
would, in my opinion, have met them freed from every kind of
difficulty.

And first, in fishes, in which the heart consists of but a single
ventricle, being devoid of lungs, the thing is sufficiently
manifest. Here the sac, which is situated at the base of the
heart, and is the part analogous to the auricle in man, plainly
forces the blood into the heart, and the heart, in its turn,
conspicuously transmits it by a pipe or artery, or vessel
analogous to an artery; these are facts which are confirmed by
simple ocular inspection, as well as by a division of the vessel,
when the blood is seen to be projected by each pulsation of the
heart.

The same thing is also not difficult of demonstration in those
animals that have, as it were, no more than a single ventricle to
the heart, such as toads, frogs, serpents, and lizards, which
have lungs in a certain sense, as they have a voice. I have many
observations by me on the admirable structure of the lungs of
these animals, and matters appertaining, which, however, I cannot
introduce in this place. Their anatomy plainly shows us that the
blood is transferred in them from the veins to the arteries in
the same manner as in higher animals, viz., by the action of the
heart; the way, in fact, is patent, open, manifest; there is no
difficulty, no room for doubt about it; for in them the matter
stands precisely as it would in man were the septum of his heart
perforated or removed, or one ventricle made out of two; and this
being the case, I imagine that no one will doubt as to the way by
which the blood may pass from the veins into the arteries.

But as there are actually more animals which have no lungs than
there are furnished with them, and in like manner a greater
number which have only one ventricle than there are with two, it
is open to us to conclude, judging from the mass or multitude of
living creatures, that for the major part, and generally, there
is an open way by which the blood is transmitted from the veins
through the sinuses or cavities of the heart into the arteries.

I have, however, cogitating with myself, seen further, that the
same thing obtained most obviously in the embryos of those
animals that have lungs; for in the foetus the four vessels
belonging to the heart, viz., the vena cava, the pulmonary
artery, the pulmonary vein, and the great artery or aorta, are
all connected otherwise than in the adult, a fact sufficiently
known to every anatomist. The first contact and union of the vena
cava with the pulmonary veins, which occurs before the cava opens
properly into the right ventricle of the heart, or gives off the
coronary vein, a little above its escape from the liver, is by a
lateral anastomosis; this is an ample foramen, of an oval form,
communicating between the cava and the pulmonary vein, so that
the blood is free to flow in the greatest abundance by that
foramen from the vena cava into the pulmonary vein, and left
auricle, and from thence into the left ventricle. Further, in
this foramen ovale, from that part which regards the pulmonary
vein, there is a thin tough membrane, larger than the opening,
extended like an operculum or cover; this membrane in the adult
blocking up the foramen, and adhering on all sides, finally
closes it up, and almost obliterates every trace of it. In the
foetus, however, this membrane is so contrived that falling
loosely upon itself, it permits a ready access to the lungs and
heart, yielding a passage to the blood which is streaming from
the cava, and hindering the tide at the same time from flowing
back into that vein. All things, in short, permit us to believe
that in the embryo the blood must constantly pass by this foramen
from the vena cava into the pulmonary vein, and from thence into
the left auricle of the heart; and having once entered there, it
can never regurgitate.

Another union is that by the pulmonary artery, and is effected
when that vessel divides into two branches after its escape from
the right ventricle of the heart. It is as if to the two trunks
already mentioned a third were superadded, a kind of arterial
canal, carried obliquely from the pulmonary artery, to perforate
and terminate in the great artery or aorta. So that in the
dissection of the embryo, as it were, two aortas, or two roots of
the great artery, appear springing from the heart. This canal
shrinks gradually after birth, and after a time becomes withered,
and finally almost removed, like the umbilical vessels.

The arterial canal contains no membrane or valve to direct or
impede the flow of blood in this or in that direction: for at the
root of the pulmonary artery, of which the arterial canal is the
continuation in the foetus, there are three semilunar valves,
which open from within outwards, and oppose no obstacle to the
blood flowing in this direction or from the right ventricle into
the pulmonary artery and aorta; but they prevent all
regurgitation from the aorta or pulmonic vessels back upon the
right ventricle; closing with perfect accuracy, they oppose an
effectual obstacle to everything of the kind in the embryo. So
that there is also reason to believe that when the heart
contracts, the blood is regularly propelled by the canal or
passage indicated from the right ventricle into the aorta.

What is commonly said in regard to these two great
communications, to wit, that they exist for the nutrition of the
lungs, is both improbable and inconsistent; seeing that in the
adult they are closed up, abolished, and consolidated, although
the lungs, by reason of their heat and motion, must then be
presumed to require a larger supply of nourishment. The same may
be said in regard to the assertion that the heart in the embryo
does not pulsate, that it neither acts nor moves, so that nature
was forced to make these communications for the nutrition of the
lungs. This is plainly false; for simple inspection of the
incubated egg, and of embryos just taken out of the uterus, shows
that the heart moves in them precisely as in adults, and that
nature feels no such necessity. I have myself repeatedly seen
these motions, and Aristotle is likewise witness of their
reality. "The pulse," he observes, "inheres in the very
constitution of the heart, and appears from the beginning as is
learned both from the dissection of living animals and the
formation of the chick in the egg." [Footnote: Lib de Spiritu,
cap. v.] But we further observe that the passages in question are
not only pervious up to the period of birth in man, as well as in
other animals, as anatomists in general have described them, but
for several months subsequently, in some indeed for several
years, not to say for the whole course of life; as, for example,
in the goose, snipe, and various birds and many of the smaller
animals. And this circumstance it was, perhaps, that imposed upon
Botallus, who thought he had discovered a new passage for the
blood from the vena cava into the left ventricle of the heart;
and I own that when I met with the same arrangement in one of the
larger members of the mouse family, in the adult state, I was
myself at first led to something of a like conclusion.

From this it will be understood that in the human embryo, and in
the embryos of animals in which the communications are not
closed, the same thing happens, namely, that the heart by its
motion propels the blood by obvious and open passages from the
vena cava into the aorta through the cavities of both the
ventricles, the right one receiving the blood from the auricle,
and propelling it by the pulmonary artery and its continuation,
named the ductus arteriosus, into the aorta; the left, in like
manner, charged by the contraction of its auricle, which has
received its supply through the foramen ovale from the vena cava,
contracting, and projecting the blood through the root of the
aorta into the trunk of that vessel.

In embryos, consequently, whilst the lungs are yet in a state of
inaction, performing no function, subject to no motion any more
than if they had not been present, nature uses the two ventricles
of the heart as if they formed but one, for the transmission of
the blood. The condition of the embryos of those animals which
have lungs, whilst these organs are yet in abeyance and not
employed, is the same as that of those animals which have no
lungs.

So it clearly appears in the case of the foetus that the heart by
its action transfers the blood from the vena cava into the aorta,
and that by a route as obvious and open, as if in the adult the
two ventricles were made to communicate by the removal of their
septum. We therefore find that in the greater number of animals--
in all, indeed, at a certain period of their existence--the
channels for the transmission of the blood through the heart are
conspicuous. But we have to inquire why in some creatures--those,
namely, that have warm blood, and that have attained to the adult
age, man among the number--we should not conclude that the same
thing is accomplished through the substance of the lungs, which
in the embryo, and at a time when the function of these organs is
in abeyance, nature effects by the direct passages described, and
which, indeed, she seems compelled to adopt through want of a
passage by the lungs; or why it should be better (for nature
always does that which is best) that she should close up the
various open routes which she had formerly made use of in the
embryo and foetus, and still uses in all other animals. Not only
does she thereby open up no new apparent channels for the
passages of the blood, but she even shuts up those which formerly
existed.

And now the discussion is brought to this point, that they who
inquire into the ways by which the blood reaches the left
ventricle of the heart: and pulmonary veins from the vena cava,
will pursue the wisest course if they seek by dissection to
discover the causes why in the larger and more perfect animals of
mature age nature has rather chosen to make the blood percolate
the parenchyma of the lungs, than, as in other instances, chosen
a direct and obvious course--for I assume that no other path or
mode of transit can be entertained. It must be because the larger
and more perfect animals are warmer, and when adult their heat
greater--ignited, as I might say, and requiring to be damped or
mitigated, that the blood is sent through the lungs, in order
that it may be tempered by the air that is inspired, and
prevented from boiling up, and so becoming extinguished, or
something else of the sort. But to determine these matters, and
explain them satisfactorily, were to enter on a speculation in
regard to the office of the lungs and the ends for which they
exist. Upon such a subject, as well as upon what pertains to
respiration, to the necessity and use of the air, etc., as also
to the variety and diversity of organs that exist in the bodies
of animals in connexion with these matters, although I have made
a vast number of observations, I shall not speak till I can more
conveniently set them forth in a treatise apart, lest I should be
held as wandering too wide of my present purpose, which is the
use and motion of the heart, and be charged with speaking of
things beside the question, and rather complicating and quitting
than illustrating it. And now returning to my immediate subject,
I go on with what yet remains for demonstration, viz., that in
the more perfect and warmer adult animals, and man, the blood
passes from the right ventricle of the heart by the pulmonary
artery, into the lungs, and thence by the pulmonary veins into
the left auricle, and from there into the left ventricle of the
heart. And, first, I shall show that this may be so, and then I
shall prove that it is so in fact.




CHAPTER VII

THE BLOOD PASSES THROUGH THE SUBSTANCE OF THE LUNGS FROM THE
RIGHT VENTRICLE OF THE HEART INTO THE PULMONARY VEINS AND LEFT
VENTRICLE


That this is possible, and that there is nothing to prevent it
from being so, appears when we reflect on the way in which water
permeating the earth produces springs and rivulets, or when we
speculate on the means by which the sweat passes through the
skin, or the urine through the substance of the kidneys. It is
well known that persons who use the Spa waters or those of La
Madonna, in the territories of Padua, or others of an acidulous
or vitriolated nature, or who simply swallow drinks by the
gallon, pass all off again within an hour or two by the bladder.
Such a quantity of liquid must take some short time in the
concoction: it must pass through the liver (it is allowed by all
that the juices of the food we consume pass twice through this
organ in the course of the day); it must flow through the veins,
through the tissues of the kidneys, and through the ureters into
the bladder.

To those, therefore, whom I hear denying that the blood, aye, the
whole mass of the blood, may pass through the substance of the
lungs, even as the nutritive juices percolate the liver,
asserting such a proposition to be impossible, and by no means to
be entertained as credible, I reply, with the poet, that they are
of that race of men who, when they will, assent full readily, and
when they will not, by no manner of means; who, when their assent
is wanted, fear, and when it is not, fear not to give it.

The substance of the liver is extremely dense, so is that of the
kidney; the lungs, however, are of a much looser texture, and if
compared with the kidneys are absolutely spongy. In the liver
there is no forcing, no impelling power; in the lungs the blood
is forced on by the pulse of the right ventricle, the necessary
effect of whose impulse is the distension of the vessels and the
pores of the lungs. And then the lungs, in respiration, are
perpetually rising and falling: motions, the effect of which must
needs be to open and shut the pores and vessels, precisely as in
the case of a sponge, and of parts having a spongy structure,
when they are alternately compressed and again are suffered to
expand. The liver, on the contrary, remains at rest, and is never
seen to be dilated or constricted. Lastly, if no one denies the
possibility in man, oxen, and the larger animals generally, of
the whole of the ingested juices passing through the liver, in
order to reach the vena cava, for this reason, that if
nourishment is to go on, these juices must needs get into the
veins, and there is no other way but the one indicated, why
should not the same arguments be held of avail for the passage of
the blood in adults through the lungs? Why not maintain, with
Columbus, that skilful and learned anatomist, that it must be so
from the capacity and structure of the pulmonary vessels, and
from the fact of the pulmonary veins and ventricle corresponding
with them, being always found to contain blood, which must needs
have come from the veins, and by no other passage save through
the lungs? Columbus, and we also, from what precedes, from
dissections, and other arguments, conceive the thing to be clear.
But as there are some who admit nothing unless upon authority,
let them learn that the truth I am contending for can be
confirmed from Galen's own words, namely, that not only may the
blood be transmitted from the pulmonary artery into the pulmonary
veins, then into the left ventricle of the heart, and from thence
into the arteries of the body, but that this is effected by the
ceaseless pulsation of the heart and the motion of the lungs in
breathing.