DEAD HEARTS BEATING

Shannon News, 18 February 1927, Page 1

DEAD HEARTS BEATING

A PROFESSOR'S DISCOVERY. " FOUNTAIN OF NEW LIFE." An Austrian professor, experimenting with fragments of hearts, has made is claimed to be epochmaking discovery amounting to noth ing less than a triumph over death. The fact that in certain animals—for example, frogs—the heart continus to beat automatically for some time after its removal from the Doa* has not hitherto been explained. '"' Professor Ludwig Haberlandt claims to have established the existance of a mysterious glandular secretion which passes into the blood and ex cites the organs to action. This secretion is called a cardiac hormone. Professor Haberlandt announce.) his discovery to the Vienna Medical Society, and the experiments are- described by the Vienna correspondent of the Lancet. The Professor placed hearts freshly taken from frogs, in warm saline solution, where they con tinued to beat for some time. Hf then removed part of the sinus—th? principal cavity in one of the chambers of the heart —and placed it also in salt solution, where it beat in the same way. Here he discovered thy remarkable fact that the beating fragments imparted its property lo the solution. Hearts which had been removed up to three days previously and were apparently dead were found to recover on being put in the solution in which the sinus had been beating. They began to beat again. In other words, the fragment of the heart had gives off into the solution a substance which resuscitated apparently paralysed heart muscle. Professor Haberlandt snys he hopes that he will shortly find a practical method of obtaining the harmone from the hearts of slaughtered animals in quantities sufficient for its therapeutic use in medicine.