​Monday Memo

As we celebrate Valentine’s Day, a day of hearts and flowers, chocolate and love, here are some fun facts about your sweet heart.

Though weighing only 11 ounces on average a healthy heart pumps 2,000 gallons of blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels each day.

Early Egyptians believed that the heart and other major organs had wills of their own and would move around inside the body.

The heart of an average man beats approximately 70 times a minute. The average woman has a heart rate of 78 beats per minute.

Every day, the heart creates enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles. In a lifetime, that is equivalent to driving to the moon and back.

Five percent of blood supplies the heart, 15-20% goes to the brain and central nervous system, and 22% goes to the kidneys.

The term “heartfelt” originated from Aristotle’s philosophy that the heart collected sensory input from other organs through the blood vessels. It was   from those perceptions that thought and emotions arose.

Blood is actually a tissue. When the body is at rest, it takes only six seconds for the blood to go from the heart to the lungs and back, only 8 seconds for it to go to the brain and back, and only 16 seconds for it to reach the toes and travel all the way back to the heart.

Physician Erasistratus of Chios (304-250 B.C.) was the first to discover that the heart functioned as a natural pump.
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French physician Rene Laennec (1781-1826) invented the stethoscope when he felt it was inappropriate to place his ear on his large-buxomed female patient’s chest.