Tuesday 28 November 2023

The cockles of my heart

 

'It warms the cockles of my heart'


Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

What a strange expression that is and yet I’d never really thought about its origins until today but it has been in use since the late 17th century.  

Cockles are a type of shellfish, specifically marine bivalve molluscs supposedly associated with the heart because they have a similar shape when viewed from certain aspects. The German name for the cockle is Herzmuschel, meaning heart shell. One theory is that the heart’s ventricular fibres resembled the ridges on a cockle shell.

Richard Lower (1631-1691) was an English physician who studied the heart and experimented with blood transfusions. In 1667 he and Sir Edmund King transfused sheep’s blood into a man.  This followed a series of transfusions in France by Jean-Baptiste Denis in 1667. He treated a sick young man with a transfusion of lamb’s blood and the man survived, as did the second man. His third and fourth patients died. Subsequently, in France and elsewhere, blood transfusions were not used until the middle of the 19th century.  The first successful blood transfusion of human blood was conducted by James Blundell in 1818.

 In 1669 Richard Lower produced a paper, Tractatus de Corde  (A Treatise on the Heart) in which he wrote about the ventricles of the heart, the cochleae cordis. From this was derived ‘cockles of the heart’, when the heart was considered the seat of emotions.

Thus, the cockles of your heart are the deepest reserves of pleasurable warm emotion.

 

 

22 comments:

  1. My co-blogger has done some great posts on medical history, but I don't remember Lower and King. Thanks for describing their important contributions

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    1. It's a fascinating subject - well, most of the history of medical practice is.

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  2. I am certainly glad someone looked into developing the transfusion systems.

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    1. Can you imagine the superstitions associated with transfusing animal blood into humans?

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  3. Interesting indeed, especially that centuries ago some survived with animal blood transfusions. As we now know, the heart is a complicated machine but without emotions.

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    1. I don't know how long the survival was with transfused animal blood.

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  4. The only interest l have in cockles and the
    like is to consume...I love shellfish and
    crustacea...
    Oh! And dear old Molly Malone...! :).
    In Dublin's fair city
    Where the girls are so pretty
    I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
    As she wheeled her wheelbarrow
    Through streets broad and narrow
    Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!"
    Alive, alive, oh
    Alive, alive, oh
    Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh"..
    ♬·¯·♩¸¸♪·¯·♫ ♬·¯·♩¸¸♪·¯·♫ ♬·¯·♩¸¸♪·¯·♫ ♬·¯·♩¸¸♪·¯·

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  5. I had never heard Herzmuschel and looked at a photo of cockles. Now I understood I have eaten them often in Italy "Spaghetti alle Vongole" Vongole is the Italian word. I never had a blood transfusion but Rick was a blood donor for years and got a silver medal from the Belgian Princess Astrid the sister of the King.

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    1. Well done, Rick. It's a very valuable thing to do.

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  6. I had wondered where that expression came from. Thank you for the explanation.

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  7. That is fascinating that people were transfused with lamb's blood...and lived!

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  8. Not really an expression I would use. I think of it as cockney - Eliza Doolittle.

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    1. It's not something I say every day but I do use it occasionally.

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  9. That's interesting! It boggles my mind, though, that people received blood transfusions with lambs' blood and survived ...
    I think it's a lovely expression though, all the more now that I know its origins! xxx

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    1. I think it's a pleasant expression, too. x x x

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  10. Very interesting! That's something I say often and had zero idea why I was saying it! Thanks for the education.!

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    Replies
    1. It's interesting that it's crossed the pond, but then, why not?

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  11. Ah, one of my (very Scottish) Granny's sayings. The explanation is a bit argh, though. I'm very squeamish...

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  12. Sorry to tickle your squeamish bone . . .

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