The Heart as Hostile Witness

THE HEART AS HOSTILE WITNESS SIMON RODBARD, M.D. Ph.D.* The heart, in addition to its basic charge of maintaining the spark of life by pumping the blood, has long performed many other functions. Thus, its sounds and thrills signal the presence oflife. Its pulses transmit information concerning its mechanical function to the arteries of the extremities. It writes its own hieroglyphics in the continually changing voltage of the electrocardiogram. Its constant drumming provides it .with an ever-present public relations function. Because of these activities, the heart has long received credit for the expression of the emotions of sadness, fear, weakness, desire, courage, exultation, and, on occasion, love. Since time immemorial, the heart has also been considered to be the center of thought, wisdom, memory, and conscience, and these attributes are enshrined in all languages. The heart has sometimes been a surrogate for the body and for the spirit, as in the rites ofthe heart burials ofShelley, Robert Bruce, the rulers ofthe Holy Roman Empire, and of the popes. Curiously, the ancients were only dimly aware of the role of the brain, that gray eminence that lies secluded in the forbidden recesses of the skull. Its discreet silence led our remote ancestors to believe that the brain was an unimportant structure whose primary function was to produce mucus. As an example of this interpretation, it is known that the embalmers ofthe ancient Egyptians unceremoniously drew the tissues of the brain from the skull and discarded them in the course of preparing the body of the deceased. Misled in this way, our ancestors relegated the function of thought to that more obvious and active noisemaker, the drumming heart. In ancient religions, possession of the heart was a prime requisite if its owner were to be admitted to life in the hereafter. The ancient Egyptians felt that the heart had the quality of a separate entity, that it represented the soullike "ka" which performed special functions in dreams and other subconscious states. Since the action of the heart is necessary for life in this world, the conclusion was reached long ago that its presence must certainly be ?Address: 1810 Wilson Avenue, Arcadia, California 91006. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Spring 1975 | 375 necessary when the dead are ready to rise again in the world to come. Accordingly, the ancient Egyptians developed magical means for the preservation of the heart at the time of the resurrection. During the long, lonely peregrinations of the deceased through the ancient purgatories , special precautions had to be taken to preserve the heart so that rebirth was not impeded. Among the wealthy Egyptians of those times, this function was facilitated by placement of a copy of the Book of the Dead into the sarcophagus so that it would be available for instant reference . The Book prescribes the incantations to be recited by the deceased for protecting his heart from the sundry demons who were ever poised to steal it. Many ofthese prayers were devoted to "not letting the man be deprived of his heart in the nether world." To prevent this dire outcome , the deceased was instructed to hold the symbol of the heart against his breast while invoking the gods with the prayer "Do not let my heart be taken from me." On arrival at the great Judgment Hall, the deceased faced a new cardiac crisis in the tribunal presided over by Ma'at, the goddess of truth. Ma'at was assisted by 42 demigod specialists, each of whom had the responsibility forjudging whether the deceased was guilty of transgression of a specific commandment of the moral code (fig. 1). In the course of the ritual of the last judgment, the defendant deceased was called on to recite the Negative Confession, swearing that he had not lied, committed murder or adultery, stolen from the gods, been vain, haughty, cruel, or committed a variety of other common infractions of the moral code. Ma'at then placed the heart or its symbol on the Sacred Scales and weighed it against the Feather of Truth. When the dial read lightness of heart and purity, the deceased was vindicated and the officials of the court led him into the...