ies--everything
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_The Editor._

* * * * *

A LIVING, DISEMBODIED HEART

A disembodied heart, not only still steadily beating but writing, as
it throbbed, a permanent, minutely precise record of its pulsations,
was exhibited recently at Princeton in a demonstration of the newest
instrument developed by science for the advancement of medicine and
psychology.

The device, invented by A. L. Loomis of Tuxedo Park, N. Y., and
perfected in collaboration with Dr. Edmund N. Harvey, professor of
psychology at Princeton University, is called the Loomis chronograph.

It will facilitate study of the phenomena of heart action and the
effect of drugs on that vital organ. The chronograph opens the way to
the accurate measuring and recording of the speed and variation of
human heart beats over long periods, even during the sleeping hours of
the subject, which is expected to prove of great value to
physiologists and criminologists.

The heart of the recent demonstration was that of a turtle, removed
from the reptile while alive, freed of all extraneous tissue and
suspended in a physiological salt solution exactly duplicating body
conditions. In this state the organ continues to beat for thirty-six
hours, at the same time setting down, by means of the chronograph, a
graphic history of the approximately 72,000 pulsations it makes in
that time. With each beat the tiny organism pulled down a little lever
that dipped a fine filament into a drop of mercury and made a contact
that transmitted an electric impulse to the chronograph. There it was
translated to a fraction of a second into a record inked on a chart.

Introduction into the solution of nicotine--one part in 10,000--and of
adrenalin--one part in a billion--was immediately noted by a marked
retarding of the heart tempo in the first case and swift acceleration
in the second.

Use of the chronograph to study the action of any heart that can be
removed from the living body is possible, the scientist said, adding