USE OF FROGS’ HEARTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 May 1927, Page 12

USE OF FROGS’ HEARTS

MEDICINE FOR MANKIND

A discovery, which, it is stated, may have far-reaching effects, not only on the treatment of failing and diseased hearts, but. on the capacity of sound hearts to meet an extra strain, lias resulted from experiments with a frog's heart. It has been long known that a frog’s heart, when removed from the body, will continue to beat of its own accord for a considerable time after. To ascertain the meaning of this phenomenon, Professor Haberlandt, of Innsbruck, recently placed some frogs' hearts so removed in a solution of common salts. While the hearts continued to beat, it was found that they communicated a something to the salt solution which had the effect of revivifying hearts which had been removed several days earlier and had ceased to beat. It will readily be seen how this may benefit an athlete who is trying, say, to break a record. His exhaustion is due to that the fact that his heart gives out —not dangerously or completely, but temporarily. If his heart is sound, he recovers after a short rest. The new “something” which Professor Haberlandt has discovered will probably enable athletes and others to sustain fatigues and. spurts with far less exhaustion than even the best trained men have hitherto been able to do.' Of the heart tonics known to medical science, digitalis, which is obtained from the ordinary wild foxglove, now stands pre-eminent. It is a most useful drug, which has saved hundreds of lives, but its acknowledged pride of place is likely to be seriously and effectively disputed by the new discovery, j