PACE-MAKER OF THE HEART.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 287, 2 December 1911, Page 18

PACE-MAKER OF THE HEART.

■ ' ■ (REMARKABLE SURGICAL DISCOVERS THROUGH JAPANESE 6TCDENTS OBSERVATIONS. Professor Arthur Keith, tt a demonstration connected with the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons on Friday, October lath, showed by tie aid of specimen* that some remarkable advances had lately been made ln our knowledge of the structure, functions, and diseases of the heart. The most remarkable of these, says the "Standard," is a small mass of tissue wihtch has been named the "pace-maker" of the heart, because it is apparently within this small mass of peculiar tissue that the beat of the heart has its origin. This structure was first recognized by Professor Keith and Dr. Martin Flack but Aye years ago. Br. Thomas Lewis, of University College, using the latest methods of electrical investigation, found that the site of the new structure was also the point at which the heart beat appears. It is tie chief centre for the activity and regulation of the heart. The observations made by Professor Keith and Dr. Flack were suggested by a remarkable discovery made in the laboratory of Professor Aschoff, of Freiburg, in 1005. Mr. Tawara, a Japanese pupil of Professor Aschoff, discovered that In the ■human heart, as In that of all mammals, there existed a remarkable system of peculiar nmsole fibres. The system Is plainly visible to the naked . eye. its peculiar branches had been seen ; by generations of trained anatomists; yet the discovery that they formed a tree-like system with roots in The auricles of the heart and branches in the ventricles, was reserved for a young medical visitor from j Japan. j