I have here (Fig. 1) a purposely rough, but, so far as it goes,
accurate, diagram of the structure of the heart and the course of the
blood. The heart is supposed to be divided into two portions. It
would be possible, by very careful dissection, to split the heart down
the middle of a partition, or so-called 'septum', which exists in it,
and to divide it into the two portions which you see here represented;
in which case we should have a left heart and a right heart, quite
distinct from one another. You will observe that there is a portion of
each heart which is what is called the ventricle. Now the ancients
applied the term 'heart' simply and solely to the ventricles. They did
not count the rest of the heart--what we now speak of as the
'auricles'--as any part of the heart at all; but when they spoke of the
heart they meant the left and the right ventricles; and they described
those great vessels, which we now call the 'pulmonary veins' and the
'vena cava', as opening directly into the heart itself.
Pages:
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32