On the Heart — First Draft Translation

ON THE HEART. The heart in shape is like a pyramid, and in color a deep, saturated crimson. 1 It is wrapped in a smooth tunic; and within this there is a small fluid like urine, so that you will think the heart is turning about inside a bladder. This has come to be for the following purpose: that the heart may leap vigorously under protection. And the moisture it holds is the very best remedy even for a heart afire. This fluid the heart draws off by drinking, taking it up and consuming it, lapping the lung's drink. For a person drinks most of what he drinks into the belly — for the gullet is like a funnel, and it receives the bulk of what we take in — but he also drinks into the windpipe, a little, just such a small amount as might flow in unnoticed through a channel; for the epiglottis is a precise lid, and if it lets through anything it is nothing more than a drink. 2 Here is the evidence: if someone were to mix water with dark-blue dye or with red ochre and give it to a very thirsty person to drink — best of all to a pig, for that animal is not fastidious or given to refinement — and then, while it is still drinking, were to cut open the throat, one would find the windpipe colored by the drink. But this surgery is not for every man's hand. We should not then disbelieve, concerning the drink, whether it prepares the channel for the person. But how does water, flowing in freely, cause disturbance and a great deal of coughing? Because, I say, it is carried directly against the breathing. For what flows in through the channel, going only a little way, does not stand in the way of the upward passage of air; rather the wetting provides the air a smooth road. And this fluid carries away from the lung together with the air. The air, having served its purpose, must be expelled back by necessity the same way it came; but of the moisture, some the heart spits into its own sheath, and the rest it allows to travel out with the air. 3 In this same way it also parts the palate when the pneuma runs back; and it runs back by right, for these things are not nourishment for human nature — for how could wind and raw water be nourishment for a human? — but rather they are a remedy for a kindred affliction. But to the subject at hand: the heart is a very strong muscle, not by sinew, but by the densely compacted mass of flesh. 4 And it has two chambers separated from one another within one surrounding, one on this side, one on that; and they are not at all like each other. The one on the right side lies face-down over the opening, communicating with the other [vessel]; I mean the right one of those on the left side — for the whole heart has established its seat in these parts. And this right chamber is altogether wide-cavitied and considerably looser than the other, and does not occupy the extreme end of the heart, but leaves the tip solid, and is as if sewn on from outside. The other chamber lies deepest, and in a straight line most directly under the left breast, where it also makes the leap perceptible. It has a thick surrounding wall, and is hollowed out in a shape resembling a mortar. 5 But even now it [the heart] takes on the lung about itself with gentleness, and checks the excess of the heat by wrapping around it; for the lung is by nature cold — and also cooled by the in-breath. Both chambers are, moreover, rough within and as if somewhat eaten away underneath, and the left more so than the right; for the innate fire is not in the right chamber, so it is no wonder that the left became rougher, drawing in unmixed air. And for this reason a thick wall has been built into it as a guard for the strength of the heat. 7 The openings of the chambers are not open to view unless one cuts away the crown of the earlike appendages and the head of the heart; but if one does cut them away, two openings will appear over the two chambers. For the thick vessel running up from a single root misleads the eye, if it is cut. These are the springs of human nature, and here are the rivers that run through the body, by which the bodily frame is watered; these also carry life to the person, and if they dry up, the person dies. Close to the outgrowth of the vessels, soft, spongy bodies straddle the chambers, which are called earlike appendages, though the earlike appendages have no perforations — for they do not listen to any sound — but they are instruments by which nature seizes the air. 8 And indeed I think this is the work of a skilled craftsman: for having observed that the organ was going to be solid on account of the dense-packed character of its substance, and then that, being wholly given to drawing in, it needed bellows placed beside it — as smiths place bellows beside their furnaces — so that through these it masters the breath. Proof of this account: one would see the heart being tossed about as a whole, but the earlike appendages by themselves inflating and collapsing. For this reason I also say that small vessels bring about breathing into the left chamber, while an arterial vessel does so into the other; for what is soft is more capable of drawing in and has give. 9 It would have been more fitting that the parts overlying the heart be cooled; for the heat in the right parts has suffered some harm, so that on account of this affection it did not receive an easy instrument, so that it should not be altogether overcome by what enters. The remaining account concerns the membranes of the heart that are not visible — the most remarkable work to describe. 10 For certain other membranes in the chambers, like spiders stretched across in all directions, girdling the openings on every side, send their threads into the solid heart. These seem to me to be the sinews of the organ and the vessels, the origins of the aortai. There is a pair of these, for which three membranes have been contrived as doors for each, rounded at the tip like semicircles, which coming together close the openings of the aortai in a wondrous manner. And if someone who is skilled in the ancient art, after a person has died, having removed the heart and taken one of these [membranes] aside and laid back the other, neither water would pass through into the heart nor a forced breath; and this is especially true of those of the left chamber — for this reason they have been contrived with more precision, as is right. For the gnome of the person dwells by nature in the left chamber, and rules over the rest of the psyche. And it is nourished neither by solid foods nor by drinks from the belly, but by a pure, light-like abundance that arises from the separation of the blood. 11 It draws its nourishment readily from the nearest vessel that receives the blood, sending out its rays, and feeding as if from belly and intestines on the nourishment — and this is according to nature. But so that the food, being in turbulence in the arterial vessel, may not hold back what is present there, it closes off the pathway to itself; for the great arterial vessel feeds the stomach and the intestines, and is full of nourishment that is not of the ruling kind. That the ruling chamber is not nourished by visible blood is clear in the following way: when the animal has had its throat cut and the left chamber has been split open, it appears entirely empty, except for a certain watery serum and some yellow bile and the membranes about which I have already given my account; but the arterial vessel is not bloodless, nor is the right chamber. For this vessel, then, in my judgment, this is the reason for the membranes. What is borne from the right chamber, this too is measured out by the closing of the membranes — except that it did not leap out strongly on account of weakness; but it opens toward the lung, to supply it with blood for its nourishment, and closes toward the heart not with a precise fit, so that air may enter, but not very much — for the heat there is weak, dominated by an abundance of cold. For blood is not by nature hot — no more than any other water is — but is warmed; although to most people it seems hot by nature. 12 Concerning the heart, let what has been said suffice.