The Heart's Two Ventricles

With what wonderful and inimitable art is that musculous body constructed, which is situated in the cavity of the breast, and is called the heart? Its form is something like an obtuse pyramid; and it is so placed that the point inclines a little to the left side. Its substance appears to be a series of fleshy fibres interwoven with infinite art, in such a manner that the external fibres extend from the left side of the heart towards the right, and the internal fibres from the right side towards the left.

This intestine has within it two cavities, called ventricles, separated from one another by a fleshy partition. In that there is a vein which conducts the blood of the upper parts of the body into the right ventricle of the heart; another which brings back the blood from the lower parts into that same cavity; an artery which sends it from thence into the lungs; another vein through which it runs from the lungs into the left ventricle, from whence it is sent over the whole body through the great artery.

On the one side of the right ventricle is a sort of musculous bag, which is called the auricle of the heart, and which receives the blood before it has entered the right ventricle. Another auricle, not less useful, hangs at the left ventricle, that the blood may stop there during a new contraction. All the blood passes through the heart. It continually goes in and out; and by the contraction of this intestine, it is sent into every part of the human body, and circulates through all the veins.

When even all the other members of the body are at rest, the heart is in perpetual motion, from the first moment of life to the last. In a state of health, the heart contracts itself at least sixty times in a minute, and consequently 3,600 times in an hour; and at each beating of the pulse it throws out about two ounces of blood. The force it must use to do sois not small. For in order to throw out the blood, so that it should reach only as far as two feet in the great artery, the heart must resist a weight of 12,600 pounds; and consequently in twentyfour hours, a resistance of 224,000,000 pounds weight.

All these things are equally admirable and incomprehensible. ‘They lead us to cry out with wonder and astonishment, How great is our divine Creator! Who can describe his glory! Sturm. $399.

HEART, Morals of the. Moral life is no creation of moral phrases. The words that are truly vital powers for good or evil are only those wee, as Pindar says, “The tongue draws up from the deep heart.” Whapple.