Page - 974 - in The Complete Aristotle

17 The heart has three cavities, and is situated above the lung at the division of the windpipe, and is provided with a fatty and thick membrane where it fastens on to the great vein and the aorta. It lies with its tapering portion upon the aorta, and this portion is similarly situated in relation to the chest in all animals that have a chest. In all animals alike, in those that have a chest and in those that have none, the apex of the heart points forwards, although this fact might possibly escape notice by a change of position under dissection. The rounded end of the heart is at the top. The apex is to a great extent fleshy and close in texture, and in the cavities of the heart are sinews. As a rule the heart is situated in the middle of the chest in animals that have a chest, and in man it is situated a little to the left-hand side, leaning a little way from the division of the breasts towards the left breast in the upper part of the chest. The heart is not large, and in its general shape it is not elongated; in fact, it is somewhat round in form: only, be it remembered, it is sharp-pointed at the bottom. It has three cavities, as has been said: the right-hand one the largest of the three, the left-hand one the least, and the middle one intermediate in size. All these cavities, even the two small ones, are connected by passages with the lung, and this fact is rendered quite plain in one of the cavities. And below, at the point of attachment, in the largest cavity there is a connexion with the great vein (near which the mesentery lies); and in the middle one there is a connexion with the aorta. Canals lead from the heart into the lung, and branch off just as the windpipe does, running all over the lung parallel with the passages from the windpipe. The canals from the heart are uppermost; and there is no common passage, but the passages through their having a common wall receive the breath and pass it on to the heart; and one of the passages conveys it to the right cavity, and the other to the left. With regard to the great vein and the aorta we shall, by and by, treat of them together in a discussion devoted to them and to them alone. In all animals that are furnished with a lung, and that are both internally and externally viviparous, the lung is of all organs the most richly supplied with blood; for the lung is throughout spongy in texture, and along by every single pore in it go branches from the great vein. Those who imagine it to be empty are altogether mistaken; and they are led into their error by their observation of lungs removed from animals under dissection, out of which organs the blood had all escaped immediately after death. Of the other internal organs the heart alone contains blood. And the lung has blood not in itself but in its veins, but the heart has blood in itself; for in 974