Note 493 — Chapter X · A PARENTHETIC NOTE ON GEODETICS
Reading edition
The spiral fibres, or a large portion of them, constitute what Searle called “the rope of the heart” (Todd’s Cyclopaedia, II, p. 621, 1836). The “twisted sinews of the heart” were known to early anatomists, and have been frequently and elaborately studied: for instance, by Gerdy (Bull. Fac. Med. Paris, 1820, pp. 40–148), and by Pettigrew (Phil. Trans. 1864), and of late by J. B. Macallum (Johns Hopkins Hospital Report, IX, 1900) and by Franklin P. Mall (Amer. J. of Anat. XI, 1911).