Oxygen Pumps the Heart #3

By Atom Bergstrom

Atom’s Blog

According to Matthew Joseph Rodermund, M.D. (1854-1919) …

“As a student I opened my mouth seemingly too wide in stating that the two main studies necessary to make a thorough physician were not taught in any college in the world, and that these were a study of natural laws and human nature and their relation to each other, when I was quietly told that I was there to attend college and not to run it.”

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E.H.J. (“How the Blood Circulates Without the Aid of the Heart,” Journal of Medicine and Science, Mar. 1899) wrote …

“‘Dr. Rodermund devised a means of entering the chest cavity, without collapse of the lungs from external air pressure, and thus watched the wonderful action of the heart, lungs and circulation in a large animal. He relates beautiful experiments in artificial breathing; first, the lungs were allowed to collapse with the arteries emptying themselves of blood, but ‘the veins with the accompanying auricle and ventricle of the heart goes on as usual only slower, and gradually with less vigor.’ (As when cut out and laid on a plate.) But if artificial breathing is begun the heart arouses itself to vigorous action — the arteries begin to fill and soon life manifests itself throughout the body. Thus, in an ‘animal suddenly killed by a blow or by chloroform, as soon as the lungs collapse the cycle of circulation is cut off, the arteries emptying into the veins, which become very much distended. But if a large bullock or any animal is knocked down and stunned, the arteries of the neck being cut, leaving the veins intact, the body will empty itself of the blood through these cut arteries — all due to the breathing of the animal during this process, but if the animal is stunned sufficiently to arrest breathing, the blood will remain in the veins.’ All butchers are aware of these facts. The more active the breathing of the animal the more quickly is the body drained of blood. So it is, with a poorly oxygenized blood, ‘the stream will often not be one-fourth that of normal arterial blood, and if under this condition the blood vessels are ligated in the manner already described, the arteries will empty themselves slowly and often much blood will remain in the arteries: but if the blood is oxygenized by pure air, the arteries under the same condition, will empty in less time than it takes to write it’ — following the puncturing or cutting of an artery. Rodermund thinks this particular phenomenon ‘the most important of all when considered in the light of health and disease in its result upon the nutrition of the body and the action of such blood upon the chyle.’ Thus the inactivity of such circulation upon carrying off the waste products debilitates all systemic functions, so that ‘the food eaten today making us happy with good nourishment, would, tomorrow, without sufficient quantity and quality of oxygen in the air breathed, produce results all the way from a dull feeling to some severe form of disease.’ While watching the lungs and heart under experiment for hours, Dr. Rodermund noticed that the heart, so to speak, ‘dances to the music of the lungs,’ as they take in pure air with normal blood — ‘as an engine responds to the steam from the boiler.’ He thinks that ‘the heart has an especially important function to perform in its regulating powers to keep up an equilibrium of the blood, and to accomplish this it needs nearly all the power that an organ of its size could well possess.’ The muscular activity of the heart or its contractions are a very necessary function to distribute and start the blood in its various channels, to brain, arms, lower extremities and the different organs of the body, but besides this the heart has more of a whirling or churning action than direct contractile motion. This action agitates the blood, so as to give increased molecular activity to the charged blood-cells, and thereby increased activity to the blood to circulate alone throughout the system.’ In puncturing a large artery the blood spurts out like a fluid that had been agitated, but from the pulmonary vein this agitation is not noticed, although the blood will spurt out with a force nearly equal to that of the arteries, there is no pulsation in these veins as in the rest of the arterial system.”

(To Be Continued)
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