Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1888 — The Human Heart. [ARTICLE]

The Human Heart.

The Medlcsl World. In the human subject the average rapidity of the cardiac pulsation of an adult male is about 70 beats per minute. These beats are more frequent, as a rule, in young children and women, and there are variations in certain limits in particular persons owing to peculiarities of organization. It would not necessarily be an abnormal sign to find in some particular individuals the habitual frequency of the heart’s action from 60 to 65 or 75 to 80 per minute. As a rule, the heart’s action is slower and more powerful in fully developed and muscular organizations and more rapid and feebler in those of slighter form. In animals the range is from 25 to 45 in the coldblooded and 50 upward in the warmblooded animals, except in the case of a horse, which has a very slow heartbeat —:only forty strokes a minute, The pulsations of men and all animals differ with the sea level also. The work of a healthy human heart has been shown to equal the feat of raising 5 tons 4 hundredweight! foot per hour, or 125 tons in four hours. The excess of this work under alcohol in varying quantities is often very great. A curious calculation has been made by Dr. Richardson, giving the work of the heart in mileage. Presuming that the blood was thrown out of the heart at each pulsation in the proportion of 69 strokes per minute, and at the assumed force of 9 feet, the mileage of the blood througn the body might be taken at 257 yards per minute, " 7 miles per hour, 168 miles per day, 61,320 miles per year, or 5,150,880 miles in a lifetime of 84 years. The number of beats of the heart in the same long life would reach the grand total of 2,869,776,000.