The motions of the heart, the circulation of the blood, etc viewed morphologically.

  • Macvicar, John Gibson, 1800-1884.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The motions of the heart, the circulation of the blood, etc viewed morphologically. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    THE MOTIONS OF THE HEART, THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, Etc., VIEWED MOKPIIOLOGICALLY. JOHN G. MACVICAE, M.A., LL.D., D.D. {Reprinted from the Edinburgh Medical Journal for March 1871.) There IS nothing m nature more wonderful than the persistent action of the heart. Beginning as a punctum saliens with the first development of the embryo, it never ceases, perhaps for a hundred years, completing a definite cycle of motions upwards of seventy times every minute and that—not like the beam of a fine balance set on triction-wheels in vacuo, or any mechanism where the resist- ance IS a minimum, but-in opposition to such resistance that viewed as work, it has been estimated at the raising of a ton oi- say fourteen men, from the bottom of a pit 120 (or say rather 43 feet deep in twenty-four hours Nor is the action of the heart less important than it is wonderful. It is the indispensable condition of nutrition, nay, of bodily life ; and in reference to all intense menta states or emotions and many other phenomena, it is to the whole frame what the action of the governor on the steam-pipe (whTch controls the supply of steam) is to the working of the stLm-en4\e It IS pnly to be exnected, therefore, that ev?r since the discoC; of the circulation of t£e blood the greatest physiologists should hate fortlu 'Sofesw^BLlfanrr IT'^' \' ^^ich the heart put estir..tln:T.T^^^^^^^ views are very considemte s ate. tor the whole heart. c