The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1874-05-21
The Heart Not Essential to Circulation.


AS you well know, DIR. Brown-Se-
guard tells us, the blood circulates
from the arteries to the veins, and Prof.
Draper, of New York, has perfectly
well proved that the chemical changes
occurring in tissues must be cause of
activity of the circulation. But there
are many other facts besides those he
knew, which show that when we irri-
tate nerve, if there is more blood in
the part where that nerve goes, it is
not because that nerve goes to blood
vessels, and affects them by dilating
them, but because of the direct trans
formation of nerve force into chemical
force producing an attraction of blood.
A great many facts indeed show us that
circulation will go on without an i'm
pulse from the heart. In plants the
circulation proceeds from chemical
changes without any heart at all, with
out any power that pushes the liquids
forward.
In foetal monsters in our own species
there are cases in which the monster
had no heart, and in which the commu-
nication of its circulatory system with
that of the almost half child with which
it was connected, was too slight for the
circulation to go on if we were to look
upon the heart as the only organ pro-
ducing circulation. Besides, in en-
bryos, in animals at certain degree of
their development form the ovum, cir
culation takes place while the heart is
not yet formed. And we may say that
instead of the heart being the only
organ that serves for circulation, that,
on the contrary, the heart is formed by
circulation. The circulation helps to
give it a form of organization, and
helps to give it function when it has
accomplished its organization.
long ago made an experiment with
frogs, consisting i'll making a section
OF the ventricle of the heart, dividing it
SO as to do away with more than two.
thirds OF the length of that part. After
a time a clot is formed there which
unites the lips of the cut, and the circu-
lation goes on with a part of the ven
tricle, which is so small indeed that
there is hardly an impulse coming from
it. There is q passage, however, for
the blood there, and that is all that is
necessary, that the great cause of cir
culation, which is attraction, may be
accomplished in every tissue through
life. Even in our own species it has
been my lot to see one case, that of q
lady, in which the heart was almost en-
tirely destroyed by fatty deposition.
The heart in this case had very lite ac-
tion, if any, but still life persisted for
some time. In appearance there was a
state of health, until suddenly one day
death occurred.
There is on record the case of man
who for three days had had no beating
whatever of the heart and who, never
theless, had had circulation. He had
had no pulse-the beating of the pulse
on the heart t-but the blood
was circulating, and life was maintained
all the time. Therefore, although I
would not say certainly that the heart
is useless organ, it is certainly by far
less important than it was considered
to be, great deal of the work of circu-
lation being due TO the attraction that
tissues exert on the blood. That at
traction is increased by certain nerves,
and thereby circulation is considerably
Sometimes locally to most
extent, by an irritation of the
tion we see this very plainly. Where
INC AHuaLiludtlon eXlsus INSIDE OF the
Uranium, we find that the carotid artery
beats with tremendous violence. Some
times we find an enormous increase of
pulsation in the arteries of the temple.
AS we find in such cases that the heart,
as indicated by the pulse in the wrist,
is not beating with much more force
than usual, we must conclude that
there is considerable irritation and an
in the membrane of the
brain or the brain itself.