We are also taught, by the fact of the heart’s peculiar irritability, that we cannot always decide on the existence of life or death from the presence or subsidence of its movements. The heart may be still beating in the body while the body has been dead for hours; and the heart may cease to beat while the body lives. The hearts of decapitated criminals have been observed to beat two, four, and even seven and twenty hours after the operation! On the other hand, many instances have been known where the heart’s action could not be discovered for hours, yet the patients recovered. In those morbid conditions known as trance and catalepsy, the heart’s action may appear to be suspended for hours, days, and even weeks – the patient meanwhile retaining consciousness. In this condition of apparent death many persons have been buried, and some remarkable cases of burial and resuscitation are on record. In syncope or fainting the consciousness is lost, no action in the heart can be perceived, even by auscultation, for many minutes, yet by the proper use of stimuli the patients recover. M. Bouchat says if the heart’s action ceases beyond five minutes death is certain, and he declares that the circulation can be heard, when it can be detected by no other means, but this assertion is open to much doubt.
But aside from this self-life which the heart possesses, it has a life imparted to it from the brain and spinal cord. The heart receives nerve from the cerebro-spinal system, and also from the sympathetic. From the former it is supplied by the cardiac branches of the pneumogastric and the lately-discovered motor and sensory nerves, which go to the heart directly from the spinal cord; but the pneumogastrics may be served at their origin, and the heart continue to act; and, what is more astonishing, the cerebrospinal centres may be removed from an animal without arresting the heart’s action. In those monstrosities sometimes called into being, no brain or spinal cord exists, but they nevertheless possess a regularly pulsating heart. The heart may be isolated from all connection with the sympathetic system, and yet continue to pulsate.
These are important facts for you to remember, in connection with the use of the medicines for the relief of cardiac diseases. A remedy may act upon the cerebro-spinal or the sympathetic systems; but if these systems refuse to respond to the medicinal stimuli, the heart will not feel the action of the curative agent. On the other hand, a remedy may act on the heart, even if the nerves leading from the great centres of the two systems are severed or paralyzed, for it may act by being carried in the blood directly to the heart, there to act upon the ganglia which lie in its structure.
Another wonderful thing about the heart is its immense physical power. It is built up of muscular fibres in such a way as to give it a strength possessed by few other muscular structures. Every time it pumps blood into the arteries it exerts a force which is estimated at thirteen pounds. The usual force constantly exerted by the healthy human heart, it is estimated, would sustain a column of blood 71/2 feet high, the weight of which would be about 4 lbs. 6 oz. Imagine, if you will, an organ exerting this immense force – hour after hour – day after day – year after year and you can form some idea of the aggregate power of the heart during the life of a man. Not only is the power of the heart wonderful, but its sensitiveness is peculiar and unparalleled. As the blood courses through its substance, even into its innermost recesses, it feels the presence, in some way or other, of everything which has found its way into the blood. All poisons, the elements of maladies, the essential portions of all nutritive material, and even the emotions of the mind, influences the heart’s motion, and the beat is altered by such influences. Disease may accelerate its pulsations to 140 or 150 per minute, or cause them to sink as low as 25 or 30. So is it with certain medicinal agents. By their use we can alter the heart’s force, the frequency of its beats, its regularity of rhythm, and other qualities.
The heart is influenced by all the forces in nature; by all mental and physical influences. “Hence, also, it is that it never wearies. Let me remind you of the work done by our hearts in a day. A man’s total outward work, his whole effect upon the world in twenty-four hours, has been reckoned at about three hundred and fifty foot-tons. That may be taken as a good ‘hard day’s work.’ During the same time, the heart has been working at the rate of one hundred and twenty foot-tons. That is to say, if all the pulses of a day and night could be concentrated and welded into one great throb, that throb would be enough to throw a ton of iron one hundred and twenty feet into the air. And yet the heart is never weary. Many of us are tired after but feeble labors; few of us can hold a poker out at arm’s length without, after a few minutes, dropping it. But a healthy heart, and many an unsound heart too – though sometimes you can tell in the evening, by its stroke, that it has been vexed during the day, that it has been thrown off its balance by the turmoils and worries of life – goes on beating through the night while we are asleep, and, when we awake in the morning, we find it at work, fresh as if it had only just begun to beat. It does this because upon each stroke of work there follows a period, a brief but a real period, of rest, because the next stroke which comes is but the natural sequence of that rest, and made to match it; because in fact, each beat is, in force, in scope, in character, in everything, the simple expression of the heart’s own energy and state.”*
*”Wonders of the Heart,” by Stephen Foster.
We will now consider the heart psychologically, or the
RELATION BETWEEN THE MIND AND THE HEART.
The heart is one of the so-called involuntary muscles, an organ which is supposed to be beyond the influence of the will, if not of the mental sphere. But this view of the nature of the heart’s relation to the mind is not entirely correct, for, as Dr. Holland has remarked, “the action of the heart is often quickened, or otherwise disturbed, by the mere centering the consciousness upon it, without any emotion or anxiety. On occasions where the beats are audible, observation will give proofs of this, or the physician can very often infer it while feeling the pulse, and when there is liability to irregular pulsations, such action is seemingly brought on, or increased, by the effort of attention, even though no obvious emotion is present.”
Dr. Murray, writing of “Emotional Disorders,” says, “The heart is an organ highly susceptible of emotional excitement, and even the strongest volition and coolest temperament will not give immunity from this susceptibility. Thus easily excited, in those of nervous temperament the organ is ever been disturbed by emotion. Note, for instance, the palpitation or paralysis of fear, and the intermittent action of a weak or unhealthy organ when it is under the influence of emotional excitement. Further, we have more than once noticed, that long-continued anxiety will lead to a weak and slow action of the heart, causing the pulse at the wrist to fall below its normal standard, both in the frequency and force, and at the same time rendering the organ liable to become excited and turbulent on the slightest accession of new emotional feelings.”
Indeed, such is the influence of emotions on the heart, that a sudden and painful shock to the feelings has been known to arrest its action, or to excite it to an action so turbulent as to injure its valves or their tendinous cords. The phrase “died of a broken heart” is is not purely figurative, for the heart has been ruptured by violent emotions, resulting in sudden death.
Terror may paralyze the heart, and so may joy when it suddenly seizes upon a person already overpowered by despair. The Roman matrons, after the battle of Cannae, on seeing their sons, whom they supposed to have been killed, dropped down dead on the spot. Fear, the chronic form of fright, occasions a tremulous palpitation, not the full, bounding beat of energy or courage. Rage produces praecordial oppression, and has been known to bring on an attack of angina pectoris. I have known excessive grief, from disappointed affection, to cause not only functional disorder, with irregular and feeble pulse, but those abnormal sounds in the heart which indicate deranged action of its valves, while, at the same time, the patient grew pale and anaemic. As a rule, hope will excite and sustain the organ; despair and anxiety will depress it; and contentment and peace of mind will give it healthy action.
It is my conviction that but few physicians have realized the importance of the subtle relations of the brain or mind with the heart; or appreciate the connection between the soul and that centre of physical life. We might go so far as to assert, that as there is a corporeal heart, which is the life-giving centre of the body, so there must be a spiritual heart, which is the centre of soul-life. Else, why do we continually use the word “heart,” as applied to the feelings, impulses, and emotions? We say, a man “has a heart,” or “no heart,” that such an emotion “comes from the heart,” or “comes from the head,” indicating thereby that one kind of feeling or impulse may be from the soul, and another from a more “circulating” origin. All the grand, noble, loving, and impassioned impulses of our nature are said to come from the “heart;” while the cold, unemotional, and more practical acts are said to emanate from the brain. As a rule, what is deeply rooted in the natural convictions and expressions of the people, has its origin in truth, and so is this accepted correspondence between the feelings and the passions of the soul, and the physical heart, based upon a correspondence between the heart, which is the central life of the body, and love, which is the central life of the soul.
Hale wrote Lectures On Diseases Of The Heart, Materia medica and special therapeutics of the new remedies Volume 1, Materia Medica And Special Therapeutics Of The New Remedies Volume 2, Saw Palmetto: (Sabal Serrulata. Serenoa Serrulata), The Medical, Surgical, and Hygienic Treatment of Diseases of Women, New Remedies: Their Pathogenetic Effects and Therapeutic Application, Ilex Cassine : the aboriginal North American tea, Repertory to the New Remedies with Charles Porter Hart, The Characteristics of the New Remedies, Materia Medica and Special Therapeutics of the New Remedies, The Practice of Medicine, Homoeopathic Materia Medica of the New Remedies: Their Botanical Description etc.