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IT is not my intention to go through the detailed proofs of the different statements in my review of his work to which Dr. Pettigrew objects, and which his letter of last week in no way falsifies, nor to show how he has quite missed the point of an observation of mine which he condemns as â utter nonsense,â but simply to answer the question with which he ends his remarks. At first sight it might seem that the active dilatation of the heart during diastole did depend on an inherent power in the muscular fibres of the ventricles to elongate, but the peculiarities of the coronary circulation are quite sufficient to explain the phenomenon without the introduction of so unnecessary a theory as that of Dr. Pettigrew. For in the heart when removed from the body, as in the living body during diastole, the injection of fluid into the coronary vessels causes the whole heart to open up from the congestion of the ventricular walls, and so produce the active dilatation which is well known to occur. This explanation was proposed by Brücke, and by myself some years later (Journal of Anat. and Phys.) |
