- Your system of blood vessels - arteries, veins and capillaries - is over 60,000 miles long. That's long enough to go around the world more than twice!
- The adult heart pumps about 5 quarts of blood each minute - approximately 2,000 gallons of blood each day - throughout the body.
- When attempting to locate their heart, most people place their hand on their left chest. Actually, your heart is located in the center of your chest between your lungs. The bottom of the heart is tipped to the left, so you feel more of your heart on your left side of your chest.
- The heart beats about 100,000 times each day.
- In a 70-year lifetime, the average human heart beats more than 2.5 billion times
- An adult woman's heart weighs about 8 ounces, a man's about 10 ounces
- A child's heart is about the size of a clenched fist; an adult's heart is about the size of two fists.
- Blood is about 78 percent water.
- Blood takes about 20 seconds to circulate throughout the entire vascular system.
- The structure of the heart was first described in 1706, by Raymond de Viessens, a French anatomy professor.
- The electrocardiograph (ECG) was invented in 1902 by Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven. This test is still used to evaluate the heart's rate and rhythm.
- The first heart specialists emerged after World War I.
For more information about advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, see:
The History of Innovations
Resources:
Topol EJ (ed). Cleveland Clinic Heart Book(2000) New York: Hyperion.
Topol EJ (ed). Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine(1998), Philadelphia: Lippincott-Raven.
