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IV. Postscript to a Paper “ On the Ganglia and Nerves of the Heart." 
By Robert Lee, M.D., F.R.S. 
Received December 21, 1848, — Read January 11, 1849. 
Since the communication above referred to was presented to the Royal Society, 
I have made a very minute dissection in alcohol of the whole nervous system of the 
young heifer’s heart. The distribution of the ganglia and nerves over the entire 
surface of the heart, and the relations of these structures to the blood-vessels and 
muscular substance, are far more fully displayed in these preparations than in any of 
my former dissections. On the anterior surface, there are distinctly visible to the 
naked eye ninety ganglia or ganglionic enlargements on the nerves, which pass 
obliquely across the arteries and the muscular fibres of the ventricles from their base 
to the apex. These ganglionic enlargements are observed on the nerves, not only 
where they are crossing the arteries, but where they are ramifying on the muscular 
substance without the blood-vessels. 
On the posterior surface, tlie principal branches of the coronary arteries plunge 
into the muscular substance of the heart near the base, and many nerves with 
ganglia accompany them throughout the walls to the lining membrane and columnse 
carnese. From the sudden disappearance of the chief branches of the coronary 
arteries on the posterior surface, the nervous structure distributed over a consider- 
able portion of the left ventricle is completely isolated from the blood-vessels, and 
on these, numerous ganglionic enlargements are likewise observed, but smaller in 
size than the chains of ganglia formed over the blood-vessels on the anterior surface 
of the heart. In the accompanying beautiful drawings, Mr. West has depicted 
with the greatest accuracy and minuteness the whole nervous structures demon- 
strable in these preparations on the surface of the heart. But the ganglia and 
nerves represented in these drawings constitute only a small portion of the nervous 
system of the heart, numerous ganglia being formed in the walls of the heart which 
no artist can represent. It can be clearly demonstrated that every artery distributed 
throughout the walls of the Uterus and Heart, and every muscular fasciculus of these 
organs, is supplied with nerves upon which ganglia are formed. 
