182 PHILOSOTHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1715. 



In the dissection of this morbid heart, 1 observed the following remarkable 

 particulars: 1. That the pericardium, or capsula cordis, was very thick, and 

 firmly adhered, or grew by a fibrous connection, to all the outer surface of the 

 heart. 2. Instead of the water called liquor pericardii, there was only in some 

 places about the basis of the heart, a mucilaginous clear substance like a gelly. 

 3. In the right auricle, laid open, there was nothing preternatural. The 

 ascending and descending cava opened into the same as usual. The vestigium, 

 or mark of the foramen ovale, with its semicircular limbus, was very plain. 

 And the orificium of the vena cordis coronaria was extremely large, yet its valve 

 was less than usual. 4. In the right ventricle, laid open, the valvulae, called 

 tricuspides, were configurated after the usual manner. The sides of this cavity 

 were thin and full of small fleshy columnae, as they commonly are, with great 

 variety of furrows and little holes. The three sigmoid or semilunar valves in 

 the mouth of the arteria pulmonalis, were as they always are in a natural state. 

 5. The left auricle was not much larger than ordinary : but its muscular appen- 

 dage, called the bulb of the pulmonary vein by the late Mr. Cowper, was 

 extraordinarily dilated and enlarged, beyond any thing that I ever saw. 6. The 

 left ventricle, whose capacity in a natural state is always less than the right, was 

 here considerably larger. And if the experiment had been made, before 

 dissection, of filling both with any liquor, this had certainly contained 3 times 

 more than the other. 7« The valvulae called mitrales, placed at the orifice of 

 this ventricle, were much thicker in substance than ordinary: and the two fleshy 

 columns, called by Nicola us Massa, almost 200 years ago, duo parvi rnusculi, 

 which send out abundance of small tendons to be inserted into these valves, 

 were proportionably augmented in size. 8. The semilunar valves in the 

 mouth of the aorta, or of that great vena pulsatilis that dispenses the blood to 

 all the several parts of the human body, were very much preternaturally affected; 

 as would easily appear on comparing them with those in the orifice of the 

 pulmonary artery, in which they are thin and very broad, so.^s to be able to 

 shut the cavity of that vessel, and hinder the blood from returning back into 

 the ventricle, and likewise transparent : but in this they are very thick, con- 

 tracted as it were, and furled together, and of a whitish colour ; and in all 

 appearance, if the person had lived longer, they had turned bony, or under- 

 gone a petrification. 



This uncommon structure of the heart being thus demonstrated, let us 

 endeavour to account for the following phaenomena. The first is the palpita- 

 tion of the heart, which was the chief symptom and complaint of the sick 

 person. The second is ihe preternatural dilatation and enlargement of the left 



