| RefNo | AP/29/10 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Unpublished paper, 'On the nervous system of the heart' by Robert Lee |
| Date | April 1847 |
| Description | In September 1846, Lee resolved to dissect, under the microscope, the nerves of the heart while covered with alcohol, as he had done those of the uterus (see AP/28/13). His examinations of the foetal heart, of the heart of a child at the age of six years, of the heart of an adult in the sound state, of the human heart greatly hypertrophied, and of the heart of the ox, warrant, he thinks, the following conclusions: firstly, that the blood-vessels and the muscular structure of the auricles and ventricles of the heart are furnished with numerous ganglia and plexuses of nerves which have hitherto been neither described nor represented by any anatomist; secondly, that these nervous structures of the heart, which are distributed over its surface and throughout its walls to the lining membrane and columnæ carneæ, enlarge with the natural growth of the heart before birth, and during childhood and youth, until the heart has attained its full size in the adult; thirdly, that when the walls of the auricles and ventricles are affected with hypertrophy, the ganglia and nerves of the heart are enlarged like those of the gravid uterus; and fourthly, that the ganglia and nerves which supply the left auricle and ventricle in the natural state, are more than double the size of the ganglia and nerves distributed to the right side of the heart.
Subject: Anatomy / Neuroscience
Received 15 April 1847.
Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 5 of Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [later Proceedings of the Royal Society] as 'On the nervous system of the heart'. |
| Extent | 18p |
| Format | Manuscript |
| PhysicalDescription | Ink on paper |
| Digital images | View item on Science in the Making |
| AccessStatus | Open |
| RelatedMaterial | DOI: 10.1098/rspl.1843.0123 |
| RelatedRecord | MC/7/377 |
| AP/28/13 |
| AP/30/11 |
Fellows associated with this archive
| Code | PersonName | Dates |
| NA7572 | Lee; Robert (1793 - 1877) | 1793 - 1877 |