THE COMMUNION OF THE HEART. 189 



to their life, the best blood in this race will continually outrun the 

 rest, and always first in the heart, will skirt along its porous walls. 

 Now what structures do we find upon those walls, but caverns, jagged 

 cavities, and at the bottom of these a number of little holes, the 

 foramina of Thebesius. Into these caverns, then, miniature ventri- 

 cles in the great ventricle, hearts of the heart, the quickest blood is 

 received, and the pores open with all their hearts to take it in. And 

 when the heart contracts, it drives out the general blood of the body 

 into the grand aorta, but its own particular blood, detained in the 

 cavernous lacunas, it squeezes, slippery with spirit, through its walls 

 into its muscular substance, and thence onwards and outwards to the 

 surface, into the coronary arteries and the coronary veins, from which 

 there is a reflux, when necessary, into the auricles and ventricles. 



It was also held that various currents of blood exist in the heart, 

 and in short a multiple communion, one object of which is, the pro- 

 duction of a successive order or series of stages in the blood itself, 

 fitting it for its manifold operations. This was brought to bear upon 

 another subject, namely, the influence of the mind upon the heart. 

 We must here spend a few lines in considering this well-known cir- 

 cumstance, on which we shall have much to say presently. 



From the oldest times the sympathy between the mind and the 

 heart has been acknowledged. The records of disease likewise show, 

 that the heart is affected and altered by the state of the mind, and 

 vice verm ; and that powerful feelings will cause palpitation, faint- 

 ing, and even sudden death from their influence upon the heart. 

 Now the heart is the centre of the sanguineous system, the organ 

 from which the motions of the blood begin, and the bed in which 

 its pressure terminates. And the reader will recollect (p. 178) that 

 the brain, the organ of the mind, carries the influences of the mind 

 along the nerves to every part of the capillary circulation, and pro- 

 duces in the capillary body, for it is the body, throughout the day, 

 a motion restless and ever-changing like the fluctuations of the atmo- 

 sphere. This is the nature of our human mind. If we recur to the 

 instance of blushing and universalize it, we easily understand what 

 is meant (p. 178). But in this continuous fluid system, every in- 

 constancy in the circulating current produces its effect upon the 

 centre — upon the heart; and in this way the whole play of the mind 



