Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper / Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and Happiness

by Catharine Esther Beecher

Fig. 33.

But the heart has a most important agency in this operation. Fig. 33 is a diagram of the heart, which is placed between the two lobes of the lungs. The right side of the heart receives the dark and impure blood, which is loaded with carbonic acid. It is brought from every point of the body by branching veins that unite in the upper and the lower vena cava, which discharge into the right side of the heart. This impure blood passes to the capillaries of the air-cells in the lungs, where it gives off carbonic acid, and, taking oxygen from the air, then returns to the left side of the heart, from whence it is sent out through the aorta and its myriad branching arteries to every part of the body.

When the upper portion of the heart contracts, it forces both the pure blood from the lungs, and the impure blood from the body, through the valves marked V, V, into the lower part. When the lower portion contracts, it closes the valves and forces the impure blood into the lungs on one side, and also on the other side forces the purified blood through the aorta and arteries to all parts of the body.

As before stated, the lungs consist chiefly of air-cells, the walls of which are lined with minute blood-vessels; and we know that in every man these air-cells number eighteen millions.

Now every beat of the heart sends two ounces of blood into the minute, hair-like blood-vessels, called capillaries, that line these air-cells, where the air in the air-cells gives its oxygen to the blood, and in its place receives carbonic acid. This gas is then expired by the lungs into the surrounding atmosphere.

Thus, by this powerful little organ, the heart, no less than twenty-eight pounds of blood, in a common-sized man, is sent three times every hour through the lungs, giving out carbonic acid and watery vapor, and receiving the life-inspiring oxygen.

Whether all this blood shall convey the nourishing and invigorating oxygen to every part of the body, or return unrelieved of carbonic acid, depends entirely on the pureness of the atmosphere that is breathed.

Every time we think or feel, this mental action dissolves some particles of the brain and nerves, which pass into the blood to be thrown out of the body through the lungs and skin. In like manner, whenever we move any muscle, some of its particles decay and pass away. It is in the capillaries, which are all over the body, that this change takes place. The blood-vessels that convey the pure blood from the heart divide into myriads of little branches that terminate in capillary vessels like those lining the air-cells of the lungs. The blood meanders through these minute capillaries, depositing the oxygen taken from the lungs and the food of the stomach, and receiving in return the decayed matter, which is chiefly carbonic acid.

This carbonic acid is formed by the union of oxygen with carbon or charcoal, which forms a large portion of the food. Watery vapor is also formed in the capillaries by the union of oxygen with the hydrogen contained in the food and drink.