88 WILLIAM HARVEY 



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, you may very plainly perceive this bladder contract- 

 ing first, and the contraction of the heart or ventricle fol- 

 lowing 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, pulsates 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 and 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, which 

 even when skinned and embowelled, and cut into pieces, arc 

 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 pul- 

 sated, 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 generation 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 fash- 

 ioned, the auricles of the heart are formed, which pulsating 



tiling 



