HEART AND BLOOD. 27 



now more tardily; and at length, and when near to death, it 

 ceases to respond by its proper motion, but seems, as it were, 

 to nod the head, and is so obscurely moved that it appears 

 rather to give signs of motion to the pulsating auricle, than 

 actually to move. The heart, therefore, ceases to pulsate sooner 

 than the auricles, so that the auricles have been said to eut- 

 live it, the left ventricle ceasing to pulsate first of all; then its 

 auricle, next the right ventricle; and, finally, all the other 

 parts being at rest and dead, as Galen long since observed, the 

 right auricle still continues to beat ; life, therefore, appears to 

 linger longest in the right auricle. Whilst the heart is gra- 

 dually dying, it is sometimes seen to reply, after two or three 

 contractions of the auricles, roused as it were to action, 

 and making a single pulsation, slowly, unwillingly, and with 

 an effort. 



But this especially is to be noted, that after the heart has 

 ceased to beat, the auricles however still contracting, a finger 

 placed upon the ventricles perceives the several pulsations of the 

 auricles, precisely in the same way and for the same reason, as 

 we have said, that the pulses of the ventricles are felt in the 

 arteries, to wit, the distension produced by the jet of blood. 

 And if at this time, the auricles alone pulsating, the point of 

 the heart be cut off with a pair of scissors, you will perceive 

 the blood flowing out upon each contraction of the auricles. 

 Whence it is manifest how the blood enters the ventricles, not 

 by any attraction or dilatation of the heart, but thrown into 

 them by the pulses of the auricles. 



And here I would observe, that whenever I speak of pul- 

 sations as occurring in the auricles or ventricles, I mean con- 

 tractions : first the auricles contract, and then and subse- 

 quently the heart itself contracts. When the auricles contract 

 they are seen to become whiter, especially where they contain 

 but little blood; but they are filled as magazines or reservoirs 

 of the blood, which is tending spontaneously and, by the motion 

 of the veins, under pressure towards the centre; the whiteness 

 indicated is most conspicuous towards the extremities or edges 

 of the auricles at the time of their contractions. 



In fishes and frogs, and other animals which have hearts 

 with but a single ventricle, and for an auricle have a kind of 

 bladder much distended with blood, at the base of the organ, 



