Gerald Buckberg Quotes

To unfold the heart, we must separate the aorta from the pulmonary artery... to expose the free wall of the right ventricle. ...[W]e must unfold the helix of the heart ...unroofing ...the from its ventricular attachment to separate the ascending and descending [helix] limbs... by unwrapping the coil. ...[A] longitudinal myocardial band is demonstrated that corresponds directly to an open stretched rope. ...Dr Torrent-Guasp has performed this unfolding or unscrolling while dissecting an intact heart... to define the intact myocardium as a single muscle band that extends between the aorta at its termination to the at its beginning. ...A fascinating study was done by Dr P. P. Lunkenheimer... which can counteract concerns that this... may not be repro-ducible...

At 20 days of life, the heart of an evolving human being looks like a worm... At 25 days... a clear-cut... single pump... In a sense, we mirror... a fish... At 30 days, the embryologic heart contains a patent ventricular septal defect and an atrial septal defect... we resemble the amphibian and the reptile... Finally, at 50 days... an intact atrial and ventricular septum.... our cardiac evolution encompasses 1 billion years of the phylogenetic development.

Dr Torrent-Guasp... formalized this description by indicating that the heart looked like a "rope"... [in] three parts: a beginning and an end at the and ; a wraparound loop called a basal loop; and... a helix that he called the apical loop. ...He described a [billion year old] worm... with a vascular tube... like a rope, with a venous and an arterial system. ...[F]ish evolved to show the first generation of a heart, containing a single pumping chamber, and included gills... [Next] the amphibian and the reptile appeared, in which we observe an atrium and a ventricle. Each chamber was separated by an atrial and ventricular septal defect. Human beings developed... [later] and both the atrial defect and the ventricular defect are closed.

Counterclockwise and clockwise spirals exist within our fingertips. ...[T]his harmonic pattern within our fingertips also occurs in our heart, where clockwise and counterclockwise spirals are evident at the apex [lower tip]... shown in 1864 by Pettigrew... [W]e look at the heart anatomically and observe the internal and external spiral loops ...previously called the bulbospiral and sinospiral loops. Their infolding into the heart develops a pathway... similar to those that appear in the Handbook of Physiology and were made by Dr. . Their format characterizes a structural problem... called the of anatomy.

Pythagoras... described the golden section: the small is to the large as the large is to the whole... Throughout nature, there is a symphony of harmonies between... parts. ... ...defined this concept of harmony between parts as a ... Throughout nature... logarithmic spirals are commonplace. ...[T]he logarithmic spiral of DNA, a double helix holding the sugar and phosphate ions... the recipe for the blueprint of... life. ...[W]e can proceed upward ...to observe the ...in ...enormous macroscopic form.

These helical patterns are common in many animals with horns, such as the ram or eland... [I]n combat... they do not break, because nature introduces... the formation of spirals within spirals... nature’s way of supporting one structure within itself. In a larger sense, nature introduces a harmony of structures from both outside and inside the visible shape.

Nature contains many pathways of clockwise and counterclockwise spirals that are called reciprocal spirals. One example of natural reciprocal spirals is the sea shell. If one takes the tip of that shell and draws it outward, the formation becomes a helix... very similar to the shape of the heart.

This combination of clockwise and counterclockwise vortexes is common in nature. For example, within the flower bud of a daisy...

[T]he heart... is, in reality, a that contains an apex. The cardiac helix form... was described in the 1660s by Lower as having an apical , in which the muscle fibers go from outside in, in a clockwise way, and from inside out, in a counterclockwise direction.

We all have to be students, who are often wrong and always in doubt, while a professor is sometimes wrong and never in doubt. Please join me on my student pathway...