HEARTS WITHOUT BODIES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1084, 17 August 1912, Page 4

HEARTS WITHOUT BODIES.

SITU, BEATING AFTER XOS DAYS.

At the Academy of Medicine, Paris, last month, Professor Pozzi, the distinguished Paris surgeon, read an important paper on the latest researches into the secret of life made by Dr Alexis Carrel, the French doctor of the Rockefeller Institute in New York.

Dr Carrel formerly demonstrated that tissues such as pieces of the liver or kidneys, separated from the parent organism, could live and develop for a period of 50 days. At the end of that lime most of them died from microbic infection. Having improved his auli-septic appliances, Dr Carrel has made fresh experiments, and now claims that tissues separated from the parent organism can be maintained in a state ot life for long periods. Dr Carrel placed the pieces of the heart of a chicken in the embryonic state in plasma fthe liquid portion of blood or lymph), and these portions, after being carefully washed in the new antiseptic solution and placed in fresh plasma every three or four days, were still alive after more than 120 days. In the third month a small fragment of heart surrounded itself in 60 hours with a very dense growth of cells coving a surface 64 limes its own size. At the end ol the fourth, and at the beginning oi the fifth month, the. heart cultures grew much more rapidly than at auy other period of their life, and the total mass of the tissues was at least fifteen times larger at the end than at the beginning ol the third mouth. Throughout the experiments the fragments ot heart continued to beat.

Two “parcels” of heart separated by a blank space, but placed iu the same plasma, beat hard and regularly. The largest piece had 92 beats a miuute, the smallest 120. On the lourth day of this particular experiment the pulsations diminished. An hour ami a half alter being washed iu solution the largest piece registered 120 beats to the minute, and the smallest 160. At the same time the two pieces joined and then began to beat in time. Other pieces oi heart were preserved trom January 17th till May rst —105 days. At the beginning one piece bad 120 pulsations a miuute, while in March and April the number of beats varied between 60 and 120. After the plasma had been changed 35 limes, on May Ist some muscular tissues were torn during the rinsing operation, and the rhythmic beatings ceased instantly.