The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1878-09-12

between from two to three ounces OF
blood; the whole quantity of blood in
an adult man varies from twenty-five to
twenty pounds. The heart contracts
1000 times in an hour; there conse-
quently pass through the heart, every
hour, zoo pounds of blood. In other
words, every drop of blood in the sys-
tenn passes through the heart htwenty-
eight times in one hour, or once every
two minutes. The human heart is
deemed, by poets and philosophers, to
be the seat of our affections and pas
sions; the seat of moral life and char
acter, of our understanding and will,
courage and conscience, and by some
men looked upon as the root Of life it.
self.
The human heart has been consider
cd bv many of the dying, in past times,
as a votivc gift peculiarly sacred. And
many instances are on record of the
burial of the heart apart from the place
where the ashes of the body might re-
pose.
Ono of the earliest instances of this
mode of heartburial is that of Henry
Ii. of England. He died in u passion
of grief, before the altar of the Church
of ChinOn, in 1889. His heart was in
TERED ut FOntcvrault, but his body
from the nOstrils of which tradition
alleges blood to have dropped on the
approach of his rcbelliOus son, Richard
was laid i'm u separate vault.
When Richard Cnur de Lion fell be-
meath GOurdan's arrow ut the siege of
Chalwy, the gallant heart which, in its
greatness and mercy, inspired him to
forgive and even to reward the lucklcss
archer, was, after his death, preserved
in II c;.sket in the treasury of the cathe-
dral which William the COnqueror built
ut Roucn; for Richard by last will
directed that his body should be in
TERED in Fontcvra,llt, Eat the feet of
his father, to testify his sorrow for the
uneasincss he had created him during
his lifetime" He bequeathcd his heart
to Normandy, out Of his great love for
the people thereof.
In Scotland there have been many
instances of the separate burial of the
human heart. The earliest known is
that connected with the founding and
erection of New Abbey by Derargilla,
daughter of Allan, the Celtic Lord Of
Galloway, and wife of John Ballot,
father Of the competitor for the Scot
fish crown. Ballot, to whom she was
deeply attached, died an exile in
France in 1869; but Dcrargilla had his
heart cmbalmed, and as the Scott
chronicOn records, "lokyt and bunden
with SILVER brycht,'' and this she al
ways carried about with her. In 1889,
as death approached, she directed that
''this silent and daily companion in life
for twenty years - should be laid upon
her bosom when she was buried in the
abbey she had founded.
During the repair of Christ's Church
ut Cork (Ireland) in 1919, human
heart, in a leaden case, was found i'm
bcddcd among the masonry; but to
whom it had belonged, what was its
story, tie piety or love it's owner wished
to commemorate, no legend or inscrip-
ton remained to tell.
When the body of the Emperor Ma
poleon was prepared for interment al
St. Helena, in May, 1921, the heart was
removed by medical officer, to be
soldcred up in case. Nine. Bertrand,
in her grief and enthusiasm, had made
some VOW, or expressed a vehement de.
sire, to obtain possession of this rs q
precious relic, and the doctor, fearing
that some trick might be played him,
and his commission be thereby imper.
illed, kept it all night in his own room,
in a glass dish. The noise of broken
glass aroused him from waking doze,
and he started forward, only in time to
rescue the heart of the Emperor from a
huge brown rat, which was dragging il
across the floor to its hole. 1t was res.
cued by the doctor, soldered up in sill.
yer urn, filled with spirits by Sergt.
Abraham Millington, Of the st. Helena
Artillery, and placed in a casket.
In IVA, Sir Francis Eastwood re.
ceived the singular bcquest of a human
heart, us the obituaries of that year re-
cord that, when "Paul Whitehead
Esq, a gentleman much admired by the
literaai for his publications, died, at his
apartments in Henrietta street, COvent
Garden, among other whimsical lega
cies was his heart, which, with ESQ, he
bequeathed TO His Lordship."-T j.
Bo,0Clitch, IN Troy (N. ~ Times.