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The BIZARRE History Of The Human Heart

how come we draw hearts like this but Hearts actually look like this is it true that King Charles once touched the Beating Heart of a living boy is it possible to live with a 3D printed heart this is the bizarre past present and future of the human heart huge thanks Tom Ron for sponsoring this video 15,000 BCE long before we had knowledge of what a human heart actually looked like the earliest known depiction of a modern-day heart symbol was created in Spain with an El pindal cave remnants of cave paintings from early hunter gatherers show this a woolly mammoth with the heart symbol located right on its torso hardly anything is actually known about these paintings such as who actually made them and what they mean but some experts speculate that the paintings of animals like the woolly mammoth may have been instructions for where to strike with Spears while hunting not exactly a romantic origin story though just a quick 12,000 years later the Egyptians began to identify the heart as the center of life and mortality Egyptians believe the heart was responsible for things such as your emotions wisdom and memory in fact Egyptians revered the heart so strongly that during mummification the heart was left inside the body and not removed like other organs because it was believed that the heart was needed in the afterlife Gods would take your heart which was often represented as a jar with two small handles and weigh it as a form of judgment the Egyptian god Anubis would weigh your heart against a feather if they weighed the same you were blessed into the Afterlife if your heart outweighed the feather you were cursed into Oblivion because of all the guilt and evil Deeds weighing your heart down this is also potentially thought to be the origin of the phrase having a heavy heart the ancient Greeks took this a step further they not only believ that the heart contained a person's soul but that it had a functional mechanism within the human body the world's first doctor hypocrates and ancient Greek scholar Aristotle believe that there was a connection between the heart and the lungs so they spent years discussing the importance of the heart's pumping action Aristotle developed these theories after studying embryos of chicks not actually humans and while he may have been headed in the right direction he did get some parts wrong Aristotle believed the heart had three chambers it actually has four he believed the function of the heart was to heat the body I guess you could say that sort of true cuz the heart pumps blood which does Aid in thermo regulation he also theorized that the organs sered the purpose of cooling down the heart well no that's too far because we have sweat glands for that so while not totally accurate the Greeks were definitely making some progress 700 years later across the Mediterranean the city of sireni in Libya began issuing silver coins that depicted the heart symbol but was it actually the heart symbol or simply the leaf of of a plant called sfum well it may have actually been both because in the ancient world sfum grew naturally in the northern coast of Africa and it was considered a miracle drug to treat countless problems in fact it was so sought after that Caesar was rumored to have stored 1,500 lbs of it within the Roman treasury given that sfum was used as an aphrodesiac and contraceptive historians do speculate that the heart-shaped leaves of the plant may have actually been the origin of the heart symbols association with love and romance sadly because of its Extinction likely due to over harvesting we'll never know if it was a Cure All or nothing more than an ancient goop Flash Forward another thousand or so years and the rise of Christianity gave birth to the Sacred Heart this religious symbol associated with Jesus Christ created some visual depictions that started to resemble the beginnings of the anatomical version of the heart although it was still a ways away from what an actual heart looks like these depictions exploded appearing in Christian monasteries across Europe and the Middle East it went on to be shown in thousands of religious texts and is still in use today for ceremonial purposes and in the names of countless schools hospitals as well as other institutions across the globe by the Middle Ages cultural depictions of the heart extended well beyond the confines of religion and were used in art to represent royalty the heart also made its earliest appearance on one of the world's most popular items something you may actually have in your house right now playing cards initially developed in Asia playing cards made their way to Europe where different cultures experimented with different suits 15th century Germans were the first to implement the heart suit which is still around in poker tables and campfires today while the heart was Finding its way into culture actual scientific progress had stalled for over a thousand years because of their religious persecution during the Dark Ages you see back then when someone died you better carried them and moved on the idea of performing a dissection or examining a dead body was just not common and often publicly condemned it was only during the Renaissance that Leonardo da Vinci and eventually others were bold enough to begin dissecting human and animal bodies for research this gave Da Vinci an opportunity to become the first artist to sketch a truly accurate representation of the heart he was meticulous with his work successfully in accurately capturing diagrams of the heart with nothing more than pens and paper and while his work dramatically improved our understanding of the heart it was not without its conspiracies Da Vinci never published the drawings himself and in the margins of the diagrams he even wrote I could tell more if I was allowed to do so unfortunately science during that time was heavily corrupt and even silenced by religion and the oppressive Spanish Inquisition luckily the Renaissance would soon lead to the Age of Enlightenment where science and art would break free from these confines one though does have to wonder how many more discoveries would da Vinci have made had he not feared persecution now in the 1600s a 10-year-old boy named Hugh Montgomery was riding his horse through the English Countryside the horse bucked them off flung him through the air and Hugh landed chest first onto a jagged rock or fence there's multiple stories to this the injury was so devastating it shattered Hugh's ribs and left a gaping wound right in the middle of his chest miraculously though young Hugh survived but not without what would become one of the world's most famous scars he was left with a gaping hole in his chest his heart beating fully exposed to the naked eye never before in recorded history had any human being laid eyes on a living Beating Heart in fact initially they thought it was his lungs they were looking at not even his heart Hugh not only survived but he flourished beginning his Tour all over Europe amassing crowds desperate wanting to to lay eyes on an actual human heart for themselves one of those people King Charles I who summoned Hugh for a royal examination the King was fascinated inching closer to Hugh to lay his eyes and his hand on the beating organ the king reached in and touched the heart with three fingers in his thumb does it hurt the king asked not at all he replied Royal Physician William Harvey documented the boy's unique case and verified its legitimacy which opened the door for further research into the cardiovascular system Hugh's incident was obviously outrageous and it's unlikely that you'll ever find yourself in the same situation but that doesn't mean there aren't problems with your heart you need to be on the lookout for which is why I want to talk about hypertension courtesy of our sponsor Amron the number one home blood pressure monitor recommended by both doctors and pharmacists according to the American Heart Association 116 million Americans fall into the high blood pressure range each year which which is the leading cause of heart attacks and stroke which fortunately are often preventable by focusing on certain lifestyle Habits Like a healthy diet regular exercise and avoiding tobacco products those habits do help keep your blood pressure in check also monitoring your blood pressure at home can help keep it in a healthy range allow you to identify High readings earlier and most importantly get accurate measurements as so many people have higher numbers when in the presence of a medical professional you can even download the Omron Connect app which will give you valuable insight into your lifestyle habits and allow you to share your readings with your doctor I can't tell you how valuable that is for me as a primary care doc visit the link in the description below to learn more about Omron home blood pressure monitors so you can effectively and easily keep your blood pressure in check we can't talk about the heart without talking about Valentine's Day the actual origin of Valentine's Day is hotly contested but many believe it began as a religious ceremony in in Rome in honor of St Valentine which could be any one of three gentlemen named St Valentine forly recognized by the Catholic Church how the Roman ceremony transitioned into a lovers holiday is widely unknown but it appears displays of romance began around 1375 when English poet Jeffrey choser wrote for this was sent on St Valentine's Day when every foul cometh there to choose his mate it was around this time that the heart also began to appear in pop culture as a symbol of romantic love the first non-anatomical illustration of the heart may be from around 1255 CE in a French poem called Romance of the pair alongside a picture of a man kneeling below a woman offering her a heart or a pair hard to say in 1550 a collection of 83 Danish love ballads were collected by King Christian III inside a book shaped like a heart no doubt about this one this is a love book but by the mid 1700s a few intelligent businessmen thought they could make some coin off the day and thus began the commercialization of love with vendors selling formal Valentine's Day cards as you could see in this card from 1818 the heart symbol had already been put to good and profitable use which we still see today by the early 1800s Research into the heart was pumping sorry I had to do that the enlightenment LED doctors around the world to perform per autopsies and make more scientific advancements than had been made in the past 2,000 years in 1801 a Spanish doctor named Francisco Romero became the first doctor to successfully perform surgery on the human heart effectively making him the first heart surgeon a title which didn't yet exist he operated on the heart in a number of patients for several years but usually with mixed results he then presented those findings at the school of medicine in Paris to a very lukewarm reception while we now recognize his surgery on the paric cardium the lining of the heart as revolutionary his peers largely disagreed calling his surgeries way too aggressive and silencing it for years in 1925 Henry sutar a doctor and engineer who began pioneering Innovative surgical techniques saved the life of a 15-year-old girl by performing heart valve surgery using a technique that was radically different than previously attempted by his colleagues there was so much push back from them that he was threatened with a manslaughter charge had he proceeded and failed the surgery while the operation was successful and the girl lived several more years the medical community was shocked at the procedure and never allowed him to perform it again it would be another 22 years until other doctors reviewed his notes and realized Dr satar was on to something making his once Bann surgical technique the norm for years to come World War II sparked innov in virtually every scientific sector especially medicine where wartime doctors from multiple countries pioneered Innovative Technologies around anesthesia and transplantation for instance Plastics developed in military Laboratories were eventually used to make artificial heart valves for all the destruction wartime may have been responsible for the Silver Lining was that medical progress that followed in the decades after was truly revolutionary in 1967 Dr Christian Bernard of South Africa performed the first ever heart transplant removing the heart from a young woman who had died in a car accident and giving it to a 53-year-old man suffering from severe coronary insufficiency the operation was an initial success and the Press coverage of it was unprecedented it truly went viral Dr Bernard had became an international Superstar for performing a procedure long thought impossible reporters from around the world covered the patients recovery in extreme detail obsessing over his every move and meal but unfortunately the good news didn't last long only 18 days after the surgery the patient developed and died of severe pneumonia and septicemia an infection of the blood while this was tragic Dr Bernard had proven that heart transplantation was possible and that improvements just needed to be made over the next decade doctors and scientists work to solve the issue of organ rejections during heart transplants which made the procedure less likely to be successful long term the sole issue that remained was waiting for an available heart which could be a lengthy and lethal process it took sometimes years to get a heart a couple decades of research later people who needed a new heart finally had an option while they were waiting for one to become available they could sometimes qualify for an artificial one Dr Robert jarvi invented the jarvic 7 artificial pump which could be placed into a failing heart and act as a bridge until a new heart became available in 1982 the jarvic 7 artificial heart was put inside Barney Clark who survived 112 days with it in 1985 it was put inside a 25-year-old Michael Drummond who lived with the pump for 9 days before a donor heart was found making him the first human being to survive an artificial heart transplant successfully the jarvic 7 is considered such a revolutionary piece of technology that it's now on display in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC that brings us to what's next the advancement of hard technology is expanding in a new dimension literally scientists worldwide are developing 3D printed hearts that can have the same shape and build as the heart they're looking to replace imagine a world where you no longer have to wait for tragedy to strike so you can receive a heart transplant rather a printer could generate a synthetic heart that looks identical to the heart you already have except it's made into more durable material and can even fix pre-existing issues these 3D printed Hearts could also be used for various forms of medical research you could test all kinds of surgeries and procedures on a 3D printed heart without risking anyone's health and with the emergence of AI finding its way into Health Care it seems we may only be scratching the surface of what's possible when it comes to treating our tickers here are some Modern medical practices I think we absolutely need to stop click here to check that out and as always stay happy and healthy

Dr.

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