212 FRANKLIN P. MALL 



tecture and growth of the ventricles of th« heart marks a mile- 

 stone in this study, the like of which is found only in Gerdy's 

 some seventy-five years before. Both Gerdy' and MacCallum 

 studied the heart muscle as a whole and did not deal with it in 

 fragments. MacCallum, as Gerdy, did his work while still a 

 medical student, but unlike him, presented his work in a mas- 

 terly way. His paper is comprehensive. When we recall that 

 MacCallum unraveled the heart musculature of the foetal pig in 

 the brief period of a week, conceived his illustrations in a second 

 week, and wrote his beautiful paper in a third week, we realize 

 that he was possessed with genius of a very high order. Ill 

 health checked his studies in this direction and his untimely 

 death brought them to an end. However, the problem and his 

 spirit of work have lingered with us, and it was first Knower^ who 

 showed that what MacCallum had found in the foetal pig's 

 heart could be confirmed in the human adult. This has made it 

 possible to round out the work of MacCallum in order to make 

 it of use to anatomists and physiologists. The desire to do this 

 MacCallum had often expressed to me, and I consider it a privi- 

 lege and a duty to a friend and to our science, to carry out, in a 

 measure at least, a plan which he was compelled to abandon. 



The first good analysis of the musculature of the heart was 

 given by Winslow about two hundred years ago and we see 

 some progress in this line of study in Paris through his pupils 

 and successors until the brilliant work of Gerdy published in his 

 doctor's thesis about a century later. The connection of the 

 fiber bundles at the base of the heart, which turn upon them- 

 selves at its apex, was well known to Lower,*' and a good descrip- 

 tion of the arrangement of the external fibers was given by 

 Winslow," and later by C. F. Wolff. « 



^ Gerdy, Recherches, discussions et propositions, etc., These, Paris, 1823. 

 ' Knower, Demonstration of the intorvenlricular muscle bands of the adult 

 human heart. Anatom. Record, 2, 190S. 



^ Lower, Tractatus de cordc. London, 1669. 



' Winslow, Mcmoires de I'Academie Roy. des Sciences, Paris, 171L 



« Wolff, Acta, Acad. Sci. Lnp. Petropal., Vols. 2-10, 1780-92. 



