The ancients believed that the heart is the seat of the soul. Aristotle, for example, was convinced that it is the heart, and not the brain, that plays the dominant role in the body. The brain, along with the lungs, simply controls the impulses of the heart and, figuratively speaking, does not allow it to burn out from feelings.
Modern science, on the contrary, gives the palm to the brain, and considers the heart to be a pump for pumping blood. As for the soul … Some scholars have recently concluded that the ancients may have been right.
Nuggets - and more
Dr. Gary Schwartz, professor of psychology and medicine at the University of Arizona, has followed heart transplant patients for 10 years. He came to astonishing conclusions: a person, in whose chest someone else's heart was beating, becomes like his donor …
However, this transformation does not happen to everyone. However, 10% of patients suddenly change habits, character, attitudes. People are becoming more and more like donors! Dr. Schwartz likes to cite the ballerina Sylvia Claire as an example.
In 1988, doctors at Yale Hospital transplanted her heart-lung complex. And the first thing the woman did after she was discharged was to go to the KFC eatery and order chicken nuggets. But she did not eat them when she was born, because, being a ballerina, she followed a strict diet.
Her attitude towards clothes has also changed: if earlier Sylvia loved to wear bright dresses, now instead of red and orange she was drawn to pale blue. But that's not all - the woman's temperament has changed. Before the operation, she was calm, balanced, and now she could not cope with bouts of anger, the desire to argue and swear with loved ones.
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Sylvia wondered what was happening to her, and one day it dawned on her: what if all this in her is from a donor? The woman decided to find out who he was. In the United States, donor names are usually not kept secret and even welcome the patient's desire to get to know the family of the person who gave the patient a second life.
And Sylvia found out that her donor was an 18-year-old boy named Tim, who crashed to death while driving a motorcycle. He disliked bright colors, was a violent bully … and loved nuggets! When the guy was picked up on the road, they found a bag with the very same KFC chicken nuggets in his jacket pocket …
Sylvia Claire and her heart donor Tim Lamirend
Remember all
Is it a coincidence? To this extent? Skeptics believe that changes in the psyche and behavior of people with donor organs are caused by stress and the effects of drugs. It's hard to argue with that. A person who has gone through such a test is unlikely to remain the same. And as a result of a past illness, his habits, taste preferences, character can really change. Only one thing is strange: why in some cases these new habits and addictions are exactly the same as those inherent in the donor?
Researchers have put forward a version that our internal organs have some kind of cellular memory. Once in a foreign organism, the transplanted organ begins to fill this new body with “memories”. Moreover, it is the heart, like no other organ, "overflowing" with these memories. Dr. Schwartz believes that the heart is the most powerful generator of electromagnetic energy.
Its magnetic field is 5,000 times stronger than the magnetic field of the brain. And this field is capable of transmitting information to any point in the body. And there is a close connection between the heart and the brain, neurochemical and electrochemical. Thoughts and feelings formed in the brain are transmitted to the heart and deposited in its cellular memory. And the same heart, once in another organism, transfers to the other brain what it "remembered" while in the same body.
Listen to your heart
The idea that the heart and brain work in one bundle was put forward in the 19th century by the famous American psychologist William James. According to his theory, the brain records information dryly, and the heart gives it an emotional color. For example, the brain states: danger! But it is the heart that experiences fear: it begins to pound madly in the chest and transmit signals to the rest of the internal organs.
But the American scientist from California, Doc Childre, is sure that the heart dominates in the body. It is in it that thoughts and feelings are formed, which are then transmitted to the brain. The heart has its own nervous system and, according to Doc Childre, is able to independently feel, learn, make decisions - independently of the brain! The scientist even came up with a name for this phenomenon - "reasonable heart". Yes, it seems that it is not for nothing that people say: “Listen to your heart!” When you need to make an important decision.
British scientist Barney Dunn from the University of Exeter conducted experiments and made sure that people who live in harmony with their own hearts have powerful intuitions. What makes one ask the following question: how will a person feel, who will be transplanted not a living, but an artificial heart?
By the way, experimental operations have already been carried out, but the patients, alas, did not live long. Maybe not by chance?.. And if in a living heart there is something without which a person cannot exist - a soul …
Who was my donor?
Dr. Danny Penman, a British biochemist and journalist, was the first to suggest that a person's soul might be transplanted along with the heart. It sounds incredible, but sometimes it seems that indeed a part of the donor's personality somehow penetrates the recipient's body along with the transplanted heart.
How else to explain the fact that a 25-year-old man, far from art, who received the heart of a young woman, suddenly fell passionately in love with painting, like the deceased.
According to his girlfriend, he began to go to art museums, which he had never done before, and, as if hypnotized, froze near each painting. How can you explain the fact that the 47-year-old foundry worker suddenly became inflamed with love for music and began to learn to play the violin after he received the heart of a 17-year-old violinist?
And why did a student who got the heart of a drowned man become madly afraid of reservoirs, and why a woman, who was afraid of heights, became interested in mountaineering after she received the heart of a climber? By the way, according to a survey conducted in Hannover, intuitively people do not want to be transplanted with the heart of a criminal, suicide or pig.
With love for Danny
Judging by the stories of patients, a special spiritual bond is established between the recipient and the donor. Many people say that they feel another person in themselves and even talk to his heart. Yes, it looks like a temporary clouding of the mind. But here is the strange story of an 18-year-old boy who died in a car accident, whose heart was transplanted to an 18-year-old girl.
The father of the deceased told Dr. Schwartz that a year after the death of his son, he and his wife took apart his things and found a notebook with verses. In one of them, the son wrote that he had a presentiment of his sudden death. He also composed a song called "Danny, I give you my heart!" In it, the guy again talked about how he would soon die and that he wanted to give his heart to a girl named Danny. It was not just lyrics: the boy, already at the age of 12, expressed his desire to become an organ donor after he dies.
And what do you think? The girl who received his heart bore the name Danny … Moreover, when, during a meeting with the boy's parents, they began to play his songs for her, she suddenly began to sing along, and the words of the song from that very cherished notebook seemed to pop up in her mind by themselves.
According to her, the girl seemed to feel that she and the deceased young man were one. He lived in it, sang, composed. Danny even started taking music lessons, although she had not been fond of it before. And she chose the same instrument that her donor played - a guitar. And then she also started composing songs.
Survive to die …
An even more amazing story that happened to the American Sonny Graham suggests a completely crazy idea: what if, together with a transplanted heart, a person can inherit the fate of the donor? The case is really out of the ordinary and not amenable to any rational interpretation.
Sonny Graham (center)
In 1995, Graham nearly died of cardiac arrest. But providence intervened. The patient was informed that there is a chance to have a transplant: the clinic has the heart of 33-year-old Terry Cottle - the poor fellow had just shot himself. The operation helped. Graham began to correspond with the widow of his donor, and then met with her.
Upon seeing 28-year-old Meryl Cottle, Graham immediately fell in love. According to him, he seemed to recognize this woman and realized that they were made for each other. In 2001, Graham bought a house in Vidalia, Georgia for Meryl and her four children. Three years later, the couple got married. Their life was happy and cloudless.
And on April 1, 2008, Graham picked up a shotgun, locked himself in the garage, put the muzzle to his throat and pulled the trigger … He committed suicide in exactly the same way as his donor.
Elena GALANOVA