Note 184 — Chapter VIII · THE LAWS OF NERVOUS ACTIVITY.
Reading edition
Except in the rare cases where there is anastomosis of the muscle-fibres; as, for example, in the heart. [According to Engelmann’s remarkable researches, the muscles of the heart form a continuum, so that irritation is propagated from one to the other: Pflüger’s Archiv, 1875, p. 465. This is indubitably the case in the embryonic heart, as Eckhard pointed out.] This I hold to be the main cause of its rhythmic pulsation after removal from the body. Whatever influence the ganglia may have in exciting this pulsation, such influence would be powerless were not the muscles so connected; as may be seen in the other organs which are richly supplied with ganglia, yet do not move spontaneously; and in organs (such as the ureter or the embryonic heart, and the hearts of invertebrata) which move spontaneously, yet have no ganglia.