History of the discoveries of the circulation of the blood, of the ganglia and nerves, and of the action of the heart / by Robert Lee.

Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the discoveries of the circulation of the blood, of the ganglia and nerves, and of the action of the heart / by Robert Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    32/72 (page 28)
    aud nerves to ]\Ir. Wliartoii Jones, and begged him to com- pare them with the plates of Mr. Swan. He saw the whole surface of the left ventricle, from the base to tlie apex, covered with an immense plexus of ganglia and nerves. It was now obvious that the ganglia and nerves of the heart had been overlooked as much as those of the uterus, and that no argu- ment against the existence of the ganglia and nerves of the uterus, which had been demonstrated to exist, could be drawn from the assumption that the heart had no ganglia, and few nerves. The investigation thus commenced was continued without interruption till the month of May, 1847, when I had made dissections of the ganglia and nerves of the healthy and mal- formed fcetal heart, of the hearts of birds, of the heart of the child at the ages of six and nine years, of the heart of the adult in the sound state, of the human heart slightly and greatly hypertrophied, and of the heart of the young and adult Jieifer and horse. These dissections warranted me in drawing the following general conclusions :— 1. That the blood-vessels and the muscular structure of the auricles and ventricles of the heart are endowed with numerous ganglia and plexuses of nerves, which have not hitherto been described or represented in the works of other anatomists. 2. That the nervous structures of the heart, which are dis- tributed over its surface to the apex, and throughout its walls to the lining membrane and columuie carneai, enlarge with the natural growth of the heart before birth, during child- hood and youth, until the heart has attained its full size in the adult. 3. That the ganglia and nerves of the heart enlarge like those of the gravid uterus, when the walls of the ventricles are affected with hypertrophy. 4. That the ganglia and nerves which supply the left ven- tricle are more than double the size of the ganglia and nerves distributed to tlie right side of the heart.