Every animal that has lungs has, therefore, two ventricles to its heart—­one right, the other left; and wherever there is a right, there also is there a left ventricle; but the contrary of this does not hold good:  where there is a left there is not always a right ventricle.  The left ventricle I call that which is distinct in office, not in place from the other, that one, namely, which distributes the blood to the body at large, not to the lungs only.  Hence the left ventricle seems to form the principle part of the heart; situated in the middle, more strongly marked, and constructed with greater care, the heart seems formed for the sake of the left ventricle, and the right but to minister to it.  The right neither reaches to the apex of the heart nor is it nearly of such strength, being three times thinner in its walls, and in some sort jointed on to the left (as Aristotle says), though, indeed, it is of greater capacity, inasmuch as it has not only to supply material to the left ventricle, but likewise to furnish aliment to the lungs.

It is to be observed, however, that all this is otherwise in the embryo, where there is not such a difference between the two ventricles.  There, as in a double nut, they are nearly equal in all respects, the apex of the right reaching to the apex of the left, so that the heart presents itself as a sort of double-pointed cone.  And this is so, because in the foetus, as already said, whilst the blood is not passing through the lungs from the right to the left cavities of the heart, it flows by the foramen ovale and ductus arteriosus directly from the vena cava into the aorta, whence it is distributed to the whole body.  Both ventricles have, therefore, the same office to perform, whence their equality of constitution.  It is only when the lungs come to be used and it is requisite that the passages indicated should be blocked up that the difference in point of strength and other things between the two ventricles begins to be apparent.  In the altered circumstances the right has only to drive the blood through the lungs, whilst the left has to propel it through the whole body.

There are, moreover, within the heart numerous braces, in the form of fleshy columns and fibrous bands, which Aristotle, in his third book on “Respiration,” and the “Parts of Animals,” entitles nerves.  These are variously extended, and are either distinct or contained in grooves in the walls and partition, where they occasion numerous pits or depressions.  They constitute a kind of small muscles, which are superadded and supplementary to the heart, assisting it to execute a more powerful and perfect contraction, and so proving subservient to the complete expulsion of the blood.  They are, in some sort, like the elaborate and artful arrangement of ropes in a ship, bracing the heart on every side as it contracts, and so enabling it more effectually and forcibly to expel the charge of blood from its ventricles.  This much is plain, at all events, that in some animals