Heartsease

“ The criminal expert will find in John Slater the one flaw in all our admirable combinations. A man who has had as many triumphs as I can afford to be frank, and I therefore lay my finger upon John Slater, and I proclaim him to be a flaw.
“But now I have got our special train upon the small line two kilomètres, or rather more than one mile, in length, which leads, or rather used to lead, to the abandoned Heartsease mine, once one of the largest coal mines in England. You will ask how it is that no one saw the train upon this unused line. ”

“ These have no heart, as not requiring any impeller of nourishment into the extreme parts; for they have bodies which are connate and homogeneous, and without limbs; so that by the contraction and relaxation of the whole body they assume and expel, move and remove the aliment. Oysters, mussels, sponges, and the whole genus of zoophytes or plant-animals have no heart; for the whole body is used as a heart, or the whole animal is a heart. In a great number of animals, almost the whole tribe of insects, we cannot see distinctly by reason of the smallness of the body ”

“ Similarly the heart-trefoil, or clover (Medicago maculata) , was so called, because, says Coles in his "Art of Simpling," "not only is the leaf triangular like the heart of a man, but also because each leaf contains the perfect image of an heart, and that in its proper colour—a flesh colour. It defendeth the heart against the noisome vapour of the spleen." Another plant which, on the same principle, was reckoned as a curative for heart-disease, is the heart's-ease, a term meaning a cordial, as in Sir Walter Scott's "Antiquary" (chap, xi.) ”

“ This series of investigations has completely established the fundamental identity of life-reactions in plant and animal, as seen in a similar periodic insensibility in both, corresponding to what we call sleep; as seen in the death-spasm, which takes place in the plant as in the animal. This unity in organic life is also exhibited in that spontaneous pulsation which in the animal is heart-beat; it appears in the identical effects of stimulants, anaesthetics and of poisons in vegetable and animal tissues. ”

“ Was it mine eyes' imposture I have seen
Flit with the moonbeams on from shade to sheen
Through the wood-openings? Nay, I see her now
Out of her heaven new-lighted, from her brow
The hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists that blow
Across her crescent, goldening as they go
High-kirtled for the chase, and what was shown,
Of maiden rondure, like the rose half-blown.
If dream, turn real! If a vision, stay! ”

“ These symptoms deepen with the increasing quantity of carbonic acid in the air respired until the utmost limit of toleration is reached, beyond which life can no longer be maintained. At this stage lethargy supervenes; and, at the moment of its occurrence, the heart begins to beat less frequently and much less powerfully than before. This condition is the parallel of that observed in the young trout, when the blood begins to accumulate and to coagulate in the auricle and ventricle, and when the heart's sensibility and contractility are reduced in the greatest degree. ”

“ 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.... And then in regard to animals that are yet larger and warmer and more perfect,... these require a larger, stronger, and more fleshy heart.... Every animal that has lungs has two ventricles to its heart, one right, the other left, and whenever there is a right there is a left ventricle, but the contrary does not hold good; where there is a left there is not always a right ventricle.... ”

“ The heart is surrounded by a firm and nervous membrane, like a little house in which it is placed as in a tabernacle to defend it from accidents. This capsule is very dilated, that the heart in its dilations and movement may not be impeded thereby, and therefore nature made this capsule so that it should contain a certain dewy moisture with which the heart is bathed and moistened so that in its continual movement it should not become dry. For when this water be dried up, then the heart itself is desiccated, and emaciates and dries up all the body. ”

“ In describing the heart Aristotle says: "The heart lies about the centre of the body, but rather in its upper than in its lower half, and also more in front than behind.... In man it inclines a little towards the left, so that it may counterbalance the chilliness of that side. It is hollow, to serve for the reception of the blood; while its wall is thick, that it may serve to protect the source of heat. For here, and here alone, in all the viscera, and in fact in all the body, there is blood without blood-vessels, the blood elsewhere being always contained within vessels. ”

“ For instance, in summer it takes Mimosa ten to fifteen minutes to recover from a blow, whereas in winter the same thing would take over half an hour. In all this, you will recognise the similarity between human response and that of the plant.
SPONTANEOUS PULSATION
In certain tissues, a very curious phenomenon is observed. In man and other animals, there are tissues which beat, as we say, spontaneously. As [Pg_096] long as life lasts, so long does the heart continue to pulsate. There is no effect without a cause. ”

“ Hence it is that if the heart be unaffected, life and health may be restored to almost all the other parts of the body; but the heart being chilled, or smitten with any serious disease, it seems a matter of necessity that the whole animal fabric should suffer and fall into decay. When the source is corrupted, there is nothing, as Aristotle says,31 which can be of service either to it or aught that depends on it. ”

“ But how can parts attract in which the heat and life are almost extinct? Or how should they whose passages are filled with condensed and frigid blood, admit fresh aliment—renovated blood—unless they had first got rid of their old contents? Unless the heart were truly that fountain where life and heat are restored to the refrigerated fluid, and whence new blood, warm, imbued with spirits, being sent out by the arteries, that which has become cooled and effete is forced on, and all the particles recover their heat which was failing, and their vital stimulus well-nigh exhausted. ”

“ When the heart of a recently killed frog is separated from its body and touched with the point of a needle, it begins to beat under the excitation of the stimulus, and we believe ourselves justified in referring the contraction of the cardiac fibers to the irritability of their protoplasm as its proper cause. We see in it a remarkable phenomenon, but one nevertheless in which we can see unmistakable analogies with phenomena purely physical. ”

“ It is remarkable here, that the hearts of frogs, vipers, and several other such animals, as can live in great degrees of cold, and without respiration, continue to beat, as has been taken notice of above, for a long time after they are taken out of their bodies. We must therefore suppose, that the fibres of their hearts, and the blood globules which remain in them, are endued with an electric, or other attractive virtue, of a more durable kind than the fibres and blood globules of the more perfect animals ”

“ In short, a patient with organic heart disease must be a drone in the hum of this busy, fast-rushing life, if he would hope to keep the spark of life for many years. Sleep, rest and quiet is a better motto for you than the strenuous life.
[340 MOTHERS' REMEDIES] The Heart.—The heart is the central organ of the entire system and consists of a hollow muscle; by its contraction the blood is pumped to all parts of the body through a complicated series of tubes, termed arteries. ”

“ I say hearts, because worms have several hearts. The earthworm, for instance, has five. They are simple little hearts that answer his purpose very well, but they wouldn't do for you at all. You must have one heart with several parts, instead of five simple hearts. Whenever Nature wants anything better done, you notice, she turns it over to one part that will give the whole of its mind to it.
The earthworm has one vein and one artery. Both are tubes like those that carry blood to and from your heart. One runs along his back, above his tube-like stomach. ”

“ The pulse is hard, vibrating, irregular, intermittent, very variable, corresponding [28] with the motions of the heart, and similar in each arm. There is not yet the slightest reason to suspect any dropsical collection. The alternations of ease and distress are very remarkable, but on the whole, the violence of the symptoms increases rapidly.
There is no difficulty in discovering in this case an organic disease of the heart, which probably consists in an enlargement and thickening of the heart, and an ossification of the semilunar valves of the aorta. ”

“ In our caterpillar we also find blood and a species of heart, but it has neither arteries nor veins. The blood is diffused throughout the body and bathes the organs in all directions. However, it ought to respire. Here step in the openings of which I have spoken. They lead to a system of ramified canals, of which the last divisions penetrate everywhere, and carry everywhere the air—that fluid essential to the existence of all living beings. In our bodies the air and blood are brought together. ”

“ But in the exsanguine tribes the heart pulsates sluggishly and deliberately, contracting slowly as in animals that are moribund, a fact that may readily be seen in the snail, whose heart will be found at the bottom of that orifice in the right side of the body which is seen to be opened and shut in the course of respiration, and whence saliva is discharged, the incision being made in the upper aspect of the body, near the part which corresponds to the liver. ”

“ If you turn to the production of36 the chick in ovo, however, you will find at first no more than a vesicle or auricle, or pulsating drop of blood; it is only by and by, when the development has made some progress, that the heart is fashioned: even so in certain animals not destined to attain to the highest perfection in their organization, such as bees, wasps, snails, shrimps, crayfish, &c., we only find a certain pulsating vesicle, like a sort of red or white palpitating point, as the beginning or principle of their life. ”

“ In place of a closed system of vessels for the circulation of the blood, this fluid may, in parts of its course, find its way through the spaces among the viscera, and in the Tunicata a pulsating heart keeps in motion a hæmal fluid, which is nowhere confined by distinct blood vessels, but fills and circulates through all the intra-visceral spaces of the body. In most mollusks, again, the musculur movements of the various parts of the soft body aid the heart in maintaining the circulation ”

“ If the Line of Heart joins the Line of Life between the thumb and forefinger, it is a sign (if the mark is in both hands) of a violent death; if only in one, of a serious, but not fatal, illness connected with the heart.
Should the Line of Heart droop towards the Line of Head and touch it, it is a sign of coldness in the affections: the instincts of the heart are swayed by worldly considerations. Red punctures on the Line of Heart mean as many wounds in the affections as there are spots. ”

“ It is sometimes said the heart is an exception to this rule; that its beat never ceases from more than six months before birth until nature’s last great debt is paid in death. But, in truth, it is at entire rest nearly if not quite one third of the whole time. Its action consists of a first and a second sound, covering the contraction of right and left auricles and ventricles, and then a rest,—and so far as we know a perfect one. Reckoning this at one third the time occupied in each full action of the heart, and we have more than twenty years of perfect quiet out of the threescore and ten. ”

“ Nor are the views that are entertained of the offices and pulse of the heart, perhaps, less bound up with great and most inextricable difficulties. The heart, it is vulgarly said, is the fountain and workshop of the vital spirits, the centre from whence life is dispensed to the several parts of the body; and yet it is denied that the right ventricle makes spirits; it is rather held to supply nourishment to the lungs ”

“ And so even an oyster has three sets of circulating organs, the heart with its double set of functions, and the arteries and veins. And this little organ beats with regular pulsations. That little auricle receives the blood from the gills, and that tiny ventricle is the vital force-pump that propels it into the arteries. "From the capillary extremities of the arteries it collects again into the veins, circulates a second time through the respiratory organ, and returns to the heart as arterial blood." The color of the oyster's blood is a pale bluish white—in fact it may be called opaline. ”

“ A drop of blood makes its appearance which palpitates, as Aristotle had already observed; from this, when the growth is further advanced and the chick is fashioned, the auricles of the heart are formed, which pulsating henceforth give constant signs of life. When at length, and after the lapse of a few days, the outline of the body begins to be distinguished, then is the ventricular part of the heart also produced ”

“ There by the potent and fervid natural heat, a treasury of life, as it were, the blood is liquefied anew and becomes pregnant with spirits and, so to speak, with balsam. Thence the blood is distributed again; and all this depends upon the motion and pulsation of the heart.
"The heart, therefore, is the origin of life and the sun of the microcosm, even as the sun in his turn might well be called the heart of the world; by the vigor and pulsation of the heart the blood is moved, perfected, quickened, and delivered from corruption and thickening ”