28 MOTION OF THE 



you may very plainly perceive this bladder contracting first, and 

 the contraction of the heart or ventricle following afterwards. 



But I think it right to describe what I have observed of an 

 opposite character: the heart of an eel, of several fishes, and 

 even of some [of the higher] animals taken out of the body, 

 beats without auricles; nay, if it be cut in pieces the several 

 parts may still be seen contracting and relaxing; so that in 

 these creatures the body of the heart may be seen pulsating, 

 palpitating, after the cessation of all motion in the auricle. But 

 is not this perchance peculiar to animals more tenacious of life, 

 whose radical moisture is more glutinous, or fat and sluggish, 

 and less readily soluble ? The same faculty indeed appears in 

 the flesh of eels, generally, which even when skinned and em- 

 bowelled, and cut into pieces, are still seen to move. 



Experimenting with a pigeon upon one occasion, after the 

 heart had wholly ceased to pulsate, and the auricles too had 

 become motionless, I kept my finger wetted with saliva and 

 warm for a short time upon the heart, and observed, that under 

 the influence of this fomentation it recovered new strength and 

 life, so that both ventricles and auricles pulsated, contracting 

 and relaxing alternately, recalled as it were from death to life. 



Besides this, however, I have occasionally observed, after 

 the heart and even its right auricle had ceased pulsating, when 

 it was in articulo mortis in short, that an obscure motion, an 

 undulation or palpitation, remained in the blood itself, which was 

 contained in the right auricle^ this being apparent so long as 

 it was imbued with heat and spirit. And indeed a circumstance 

 of the same kind is extremely manifest in the course of the ge- 

 neration of animals, as may be seen in the course of the first 

 seven days of the incubation of the chick: A drop of blood 

 makes its appearance which palpitates, as Aristotle had already 

 observed; from this, when the growth is further advanced and 

 the chick is fashioned, the auricles of the heart are formed, 

 which pulsating henceforth give constant signs of life. When 

 at length, and after the lapse of a few days, the outline of the 

 body begins to be distinguished, then is the ventricular part of 

 the heart also produced ; but it continues for a time white and 

 apparently bloodless, like the rest of the animal; neither does 

 it pulsate or give signs of motion. I have seen a similar con- 

 dition of the heart in the human foetus about the beginning of 



