THE ADRENAL SECRETION AND THE HEART. 



423 



were most conspicuous on the papillary muscles and in the 

 neighborhood of the great vessels, being less easily seen in the 

 region of the apex, where they were obscured by the trabecular 

 net-work." 



Very suggestive in connection with our own views are also 

 the observations of Gad 5 on the vessels of Thebesius in the 

 ox, and to which Pratt refers in the following words: "In the 

 method which he describes for demonstrating the action of the 

 valves of the left heart, wherein water under pressure is made 

 to fill the ventricle and aorta, he noticed that water flowed 

 into the right heart from the foramina Thebesii. On illuminat- 

 ing the interior of the left ventricle he was enabled to see fine, 

 blood-stained streams issuing from the endocardial wall into 

 the clear water with which the cavity was filled." Finally he 

 reviews the labors of Magrath and Kennedy, 6 who, "working 

 with artificial circulations of defibrinated blood on the isolated 

 heart of the cat, observed that a small portion of the coronary 

 "blood found its way into the left ventricle. The only possible 

 source of access other than from the vessels of Thebesius was 

 leakage past the aortic valves. This leakage, as shown by a 

 manometer-record of aortic pressure, did not occur." The 

 author closes his review of the literature of the subject with 

 the statement that "notwithstanding these painstaking ob- 

 servations, the vessels of Thebesius still occupy a very obscure 

 position in anatomical literature. Foramina Thebesii are re- 

 ferred to as constant in the right auricle, forming in part the 

 mouths of small veins. Their occurrence in the left auricle is 

 occasionally mentioned. But the fact that the vessels of Thebe- 

 sius open into all the chambers of the heart ventricles as well 

 as auricles is hardly recognized." 7 



In the author's own experiments, various agents were in- 

 jected at a constant pressure, through the coronaries of fresh, 

 often still living, hearts of the rabbit and dog. They showed 

 that liquids in these vessels penetrate into the heart cavities 

 through the endocardial foramina, thus verifying the foregoing 



1897. 



6 Gad: Archiv fur Pbysiologie, p. 380, 1886. 



Magrath and Kennedy: Journal of Experimental Medicine, vol. ii, p. 13, 



7 All italics are our own. 



