A FIEST STUDY OF THE WEIGHT, VARIABILITY, AND 
CORRELATION OF THE HUMAN VISCERA, WITH 
SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE HEALTHY AND 
DISEASED HEART. 
By M. greenwood, Junior. 
1. During the last few years, thanks to many improvements in our methods 
of analysis, several of the biometric constants of the human body have been 
investigated. The coefficients of correlation of almost all the separate bones have 
been ascertained with some accuracy, and the suspected relationship between 
intellectual and physical characters has been closely scrutinised. Under these 
circumstances it is strange that so little work has been done on the weights and 
correlations of the viscera. Even such a simple measurement as the weight of the 
heart does not appear to have been calculated from any adequate series of obser- 
vations. English text-books of anatomy give this weight on the authority of 
Reid and Peacock or on that of Clendinning. These two sets of observations 
are based upon very few cases. Peacock and Reid's results are drawn from 181 
males and 110 females, and Clendinning's from 90 and 71 respectively*. It will 
be evident, therefore, that no great importance can be attached to them, even if 
we leave on one side the fact that they afford no materials for the study of 
correlation. 
Clearly, the only way to obtain data for the solution of problems concerning 
the absolute and relative weights of the viscera is to extract as large a series of 
observations as possible from the post-mortem department records of a large general 
hospital. The present memoir contains the preliminary analysis of such a series 
from the pathological data of the London Hospital. 
It might be supposed that post-mortem records would contain a very large 
number of available cases, and that the weights of the various organs would be 
found recorded with considerable accuracy. As a matter of fact, however, simple 
* Clendinning's results are quoted in the English text-books, and also in Grisolle's Traite de 
Pathologic Interne (9th Ed. p. 200, Vol. ii.). See also, K. Pearson: "Variation in Man and Woman" 
{Chances of Death and other Studies in Kvohition, Vol. i. p. 316); Peacock and Eeid : London and 
Edinburgh Monthly Journal of Medical Science, 18-13-6, 1854. 
