HEARTS AND FLOWERS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22388, 29 April 1938, Page 15

HEARTS AND FLOWERS

TO THB EDITOR OF THB PRESS. Sir.—Racl> week always gives “Catholic Truth” the blues. He goes into “retreat” and reads religious books. He likes the sports who spot winners and back losers. Mark Twain says they will live for ever; there is one born every minute. Catholic Truth” dearly loves to dig in his garden. listen to the organ of the sea and look into world affairs. It is said that only a changes Qi hears is ah, £hia pad

world needs. Now we can have a change of heart. Colonel Lindbergh and Dr. Carrel, the famous biologist, have invented a robot heart, and these artificial hearts are interchangeable and never stop beating. The rustic who writes these Imes and digs his garden has seen the everbeating heart. He was born young and in his youth he did frequent doctor and saint and heard great argument about the ever-beating heart and what made the heart beat. 'With your permission he will dig in the garden of the great Carrel and pick a few flowers abput the beat of the heart. Carrel says what makes the heartbeat has always been a fundamental object of biological inquiry. The frog’s heart, after removal from the living body, will live for days. The nervous system legulates the beating of the heart, but has nothing to do with the cause of its beat. When it was discovered that nerve cells are contained in the frog’s heart it was natural that the cause of the heart beat should be attributed to those .nerve cells. When these cells are removed, the heart stops. Thus the heart, unlike any other muscle of the body, is endowed with the function of originating its own power or beat, and the power belongs to the muscle itself. In cold-blooded animals bits of heart muscle, when removed front the heart, will develop the power to beat. Havelock Ellis says this beat or swing of the heart came into life very early, almost as early as the swing of tides. We see It in the sap of plants and m the fluid of lowly forms of life before we see the beating heart or anything like a heart. Although the heart “beats on its own” it must be fed with the blood of life. In the days of simple faith, the socalled Blood of Life was much of a mystery. A blood transfusion was a hit or miss. It might land the patient into new life or land him into the next world. But a brilliant biologist, Landsteiner, the son of a common Communist Jew, made a remarkable discovery. The living cells of human blood are divided into four groups, the knowledge of which means life or death after a blood transfusion. One of these groups is called universal; its cells agree with the cells of all the other groups. The cells of the other groups agree only with their own group and the universal. When ihc cells do not agree they agglutinate; this means they will not work in the blood stream; they clump, clot, and die. If a certs in Pope of Rome had not lived 300 years too soon, the light of Landsteiner would have saved his valuable life. Sacred Books had put it on record that “The blood was the life.” This sacred record was responsible for an ancient medical superstition—that young blood had ..ie power to impart youth into _an pld end worn-out body. Carrel claims that Pope Innocent VIII believed in this old medical superstition. He had the blood of three young men transfused into his veins, but after this operation, he died. (“Man The Unknown." p. 147.) Carrel is world-famed as a research worker —a mountain of a man in the biological world. He is dabbling and digging in the very subcellars of biology. pacing nervously up and down his laboratory, stopping to stare into the very beginnings of life and showing his students how the mortal heart of man will live for ever; as though life might be a godless accident.

It is now more than 25 years since Carrel started a bit of heart muscle growing, in a soup or serum. This bit of heart is still beating, and according to Carrel it will go on beating for ever if there are enough' generations of Carre’s to feed it.—Yours, etc., CATHOLIC TRUTH. April 24, 1938.