Page:The Harveian Oration,1902.djvu/24

 with sensibility, and is barely, if at all, sensitive to tactile stimuli. This fact was first demonstrated by Harvey in the case of the son of Viscount Montgomery, whose heart had been exposed by destructive ulceration of the chest wall in the praecordial region. This interesting patient was brought under Harvey's notice by King Charles. Harvey relates:—

"I carried the young man himself to the king, that His Majesty might, with his own eyes behold this wonderful case : that in a man alive and well, he might, without detriment to the individual, observe the movement of the heart, and with his proper hand even touch the ventricals as they contracted; and his Most Excellent Majesty, as well as myself, acknowledged that the heart was without sense of touch, for the youth never knew when we touched his heart except by the sight or the sensation he had through the external integument."

The heart, however, is sensitive to severer forms of stimuli, and more particularly to states of abnormal tension. It is as Budge found more sensitive towards the base, and less so