5 ms·

Why a 224-Year-Old Human Heart Is Touring Brazil

68 points by Thevet 4y ago

brianyu8 4y ago
> the 20-pound heart seems to be in good shape for its age. Still, there’s something about it—its pale color and gigantic proportions—that make it seem unreal. According to Da Silva, this dilation was probably caused by tuberculosis, which can cause the swelling of some organs. Apparently a normal human heart weights 10 ounces[0]. That means Dom Pedro's heart is 32x the weight of a normal heart! Can all that extra weight truly be caused by tuberculosis alone? [0]: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21704-heart#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20an%20adult's%20heart,your%20body%20size%20and%20sex https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21704-heart#:~:te....
- worewood 4y ago
  I guess they included the Formaldehyde weight in the total.
tjlingham 4y ago
There is something off about the weight. Muscle is only slightly more dense than water. So 20 pounds would be about 9 litres of tissue by volume. This looks like maybe 3 litres at the most including the enclosure and liquid it's submerged in. Edit: ok, so other articles say that the whole urn is 20 pounds. Makes a lot more sense https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3189818/emperor-pedro-heart-returns-brazil-state-visit https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3189818/emp...
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Yeah 20 pounds sounds like an elephant’s heart.
teruakohatu 4y ago
Pedro I was a fascinating individual. Liberal despite a poor education, he was the first Emperor of Brazil (while his father was King of Portugal), very briefly the King of Portugal and in the last few years of his life neither while traveling Europe advocating for his daughter and "borrowing" a ductal title from her.
- iksub 4y ago
  poor education?
  - teruakohatu 4y ago
    As a child he was unruly and did not enjoy being taught, he had the ability to dismiss his instructors at will. In other words, like any child but with a lot of power and a father who didn't intervene. He was painfully aware of his poor education, so much so that he wrote about it and others also commented on it. One of his naval Commander's wrote: "his good qualities were his own; his bad owing to want of education; and no man was more sensible of that defect than himself."
ptsneves 4y ago
I remember reading that the Portuguese authorities were not sure the heart was in condition for travel. There were significant diplomatic efforts to have it moved to Brazil. As a Portuguese I am glad it happened and that it is even touring the country. Like the sword of Bolivar that recently was brought to Colombia, I wonder if this is a general push for state identity consolidation.(on the sword topic there was controversy where the king of Spain did not get up to pay homage to it when presented in the ceremony). I think he did well as did the Colombian president in not picking up the incident)
- bXVsbGVy 4y ago
  I was surprised to find out that Portugal cared. It is election year in Brazil. The opposition has been portraying this as an example of bad taste of the president (by the way, he has has been insinuating there will be a coup on the independence day -- and it wont be shocking if he try).
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    On the other hand, Brazil is now so polarized that it's just not possible to not see this event in the same lens. Unfortunately.
  - doliveira 4y ago
    I've been practicing voluntary ignorance about Brazilian politics, and I'm a little proud I hadn't heard about this whole heart thing at all.
  - ptsneves 4y ago
    Portugal cares because there are a significant amount of Portuguese business interests in Brasil. The remainders of the Portuguese financial system are there and the destruction of Portugal Telecom(the state owned telecom) happened because of bad deals in Brazil. Portugal telecom was the main technological champion in Portugal and it is my theory that it set back Portugal’s ability to grow its tech sector maybe for decades(not that it was a strong one). This because it provided employment to engineering positions and without it the economy of the country was/is too simple to have demand for those positions. That means that most of the newly minted engineers just leave to never return.
bXVsbGVy 4y ago
Some historical context about Brazilian independence (1822). In 1807, United Kingdom prohibited slave trade in their colonies and pressed Portugal (that had very close relationship with UK) to do the same. But Brazilian economy depended on slave labor. And land owners weren't having it. Dom Pedro I declared the independence to calm down the the elite while keeping the country under Portugal influence -- the newly independent country was a monarchy with an imperator from the Portuguese Royal family. Thanks to him and his son, Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery. But hey, at least the country didn't break into many small nations. And avoided wars. So in the end it was good I guess \s.
- schoen 4y ago
  > Thanks to him and his son, Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery. Nope, there were dozens of countries that abolished slavery later than Brazil. The most recent was Mauritania, in 1981. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom#1850%E2%80%931899 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave... I believe Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, but far from the last country in the world as a whole to do so.
  - bXVsbGVy 4y ago
    To be precise. Brazil was the last country from the West to abolish slavery. Almost 40% of slaves traded over the Atlantic went to Brazil.
    - pelasaco 4y ago
      One will say that communism, fascism and socialism enslave, and other will say that capitalism does. What was the difference between a concentration camp, gulag or a plantation? How far they are from the modern slavery from Bolivians in Brazil? Food for thoughts
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - 4y ago
ufo 4y ago
Because Brazilian fascists are pro-monarchy. Go figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
anshumankmr 4y ago
>Though unusual today, heart burial was once an accepted practice. In the Middle Ages, the hearts of saints were worshiped separately from their bodies, and the hearts of dead Crusaders were occasionally the only part sent back home, Quite true. And this practice pre-dates the person to whom it belonged by hundreds of years. For example, when Richard I of England died, this happened >Richard's heart was buried at Rouen in Normandy, his entrails in Châlus (where he died), and the rest of his body at the feet of his father at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou.[133] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England
- jbarham 4y ago
  When David Livingstone died in 1873 in what is now Zambia his attendants removed his heart and buried it under a tree. They then carried his body over 1000 miles to the coast near Dar es Salaam, where his remains were returned by ship to Britain and interned in Westminster Abbey. But Livingstone's heart belonged to Africa.
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  Relics were an early form of mass tourism. Every European city wanted in on the lucrative pilgrimage industry so they cut up the bodies of saints. The Catholic church has a lot of Saints that nobody even knows about anymore.
  - anshumankmr 4y ago
    Hmm but what about the early 1100s? I don't think there was a middle class at the time, there was the upper class the King or the queenn, their lords, ministers, nobles and knights. Then there was the worker class like peasants, smiths etc.
baybal2 4y ago
forinti 4y ago
This is just bizarre and makes no sense in the 21st century. We're long over the monarchy (although we haven't changed the flag, few people know what it stands for). It's just some made-up symbolism from this brain dead reactionary government.

68 points by Thevet 4y ago

> the 20-pound heart seems to be in good shape for its age. Still, there’s something about it—its pale color and gigantic proportions—that make it seem unreal. According to Da Silva, this dilation was probably caused by tuberculosis, which can cause the swelling of some organs. Apparently a normal human heart weights 10 ounces[0]. That means Dom Pedro's heart is 32x the weight of a normal heart! Can all that extra weight truly be caused by tuberculosis alone? [0]: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21704-heart#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20an%20adult's%20heart,your%20body%20size%20and%20sex https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21704-heart#:~:te....

worewood 4y ago
I guess they included the Formaldehyde weight in the total.

tjlingham 4y ago

There is something off about the weight. Muscle is only slightly more dense than water. So 20 pounds would be about 9 litres of tissue by volume. This looks like maybe 3 litres at the most including the enclosure and liquid it's submerged in. Edit: ok, so other articles say that the whole urn is 20 pounds. Makes a lot more sense https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3189818/emperor-pedro-heart-returns-brazil-state-visit https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3189818/emp...

quickthrower2 4y ago
Yeah 20 pounds sounds like an elephant’s heart.

teruakohatu 4y ago

Pedro I was a fascinating individual. Liberal despite a poor education, he was the first Emperor of Brazil (while his father was King of Portugal), very briefly the King of Portugal and in the last few years of his life neither while traveling Europe advocating for his daughter and "borrowing" a ductal title from her.

iksub 4y ago
poor education?
- teruakohatu 4y ago
  As a child he was unruly and did not enjoy being taught, he had the ability to dismiss his instructors at will. In other words, like any child but with a lot of power and a father who didn't intervene. He was painfully aware of his poor education, so much so that he wrote about it and others also commented on it. One of his naval Commander's wrote: "his good qualities were his own; his bad owing to want of education; and no man was more sensible of that defect than himself."

ptsneves 4y ago

I remember reading that the Portuguese authorities were not sure the heart was in condition for travel. There were significant diplomatic efforts to have it moved to Brazil. As a Portuguese I am glad it happened and that it is even touring the country. Like the sword of Bolivar that recently was brought to Colombia, I wonder if this is a general push for state identity consolidation.(on the sword topic there was controversy where the king of Spain did not get up to pay homage to it when presented in the ceremony). I think he did well as did the Colombian president in not picking up the incident)

bXVsbGVy 4y ago
I was surprised to find out that Portugal cared. It is election year in Brazil. The opposition has been portraying this as an example of bad taste of the president (by the way, he has has been insinuating there will be a coup on the independence day -- and it wont be shocking if he try).
- kzrdude 4y ago
  On the other hand, Brazil is now so polarized that it's just not possible to not see this event in the same lens. Unfortunately.
- doliveira 4y ago
  I've been practicing voluntary ignorance about Brazilian politics, and I'm a little proud I hadn't heard about this whole heart thing at all.
- ptsneves 4y ago
  Portugal cares because there are a significant amount of Portuguese business interests in Brasil. The remainders of the Portuguese financial system are there and the destruction of Portugal Telecom(the state owned telecom) happened because of bad deals in Brazil. Portugal telecom was the main technological champion in Portugal and it is my theory that it set back Portugal’s ability to grow its tech sector maybe for decades(not that it was a strong one). This because it provided employment to engineering positions and without it the economy of the country was/is too simple to have demand for those positions. That means that most of the newly minted engineers just leave to never return.

bXVsbGVy 4y ago

Some historical context about Brazilian independence (1822). In 1807, United Kingdom prohibited slave trade in their colonies and pressed Portugal (that had very close relationship with UK) to do the same. But Brazilian economy depended on slave labor. And land owners weren't having it. Dom Pedro I declared the independence to calm down the the elite while keeping the country under Portugal influence -- the newly independent country was a monarchy with an imperator from the Portuguese Royal family. Thanks to him and his son, Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery. But hey, at least the country didn't break into many small nations. And avoided wars. So in the end it was good I guess \s.

schoen 4y ago
> Thanks to him and his son, Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery. Nope, there were dozens of countries that abolished slavery later than Brazil. The most recent was Mauritania, in 1981. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom#1850%E2%80%931899 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave... I believe Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, but far from the last country in the world as a whole to do so.
- bXVsbGVy 4y ago
  To be precise. Brazil was the last country from the West to abolish slavery. Almost 40% of slaves traded over the Atlantic went to Brazil.
  - pelasaco 4y ago
    One will say that communism, fascism and socialism enslave, and other will say that capitalism does. What was the difference between a concentration camp, gulag or a plantation? How far they are from the modern slavery from Bolivians in Brazil? Food for thoughts
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 4y ago

ufo 4y ago

Because Brazilian fascists are pro-monarchy. Go figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

anshumankmr 4y ago

>Though unusual today, heart burial was once an accepted practice. In the Middle Ages, the hearts of saints were worshiped separately from their bodies, and the hearts of dead Crusaders were occasionally the only part sent back home, Quite true. And this practice pre-dates the person to whom it belonged by hundreds of years. For example, when Richard I of England died, this happened >Richard's heart was buried at Rouen in Normandy, his entrails in Châlus (where he died), and the rest of his body at the feet of his father at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou.[133] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England

jbarham 4y ago
When David Livingstone died in 1873 in what is now Zambia his attendants removed his heart and buried it under a tree. They then carried his body over 1000 miles to the coast near Dar es Salaam, where his remains were returned by ship to Britain and interned in Westminster Abbey. But Livingstone's heart belonged to Africa.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Relics were an early form of mass tourism. Every European city wanted in on the lucrative pilgrimage industry so they cut up the bodies of saints. The Catholic church has a lot of Saints that nobody even knows about anymore.
- anshumankmr 4y ago
  Hmm but what about the early 1100s? I don't think there was a middle class at the time, there was the upper class the King or the queenn, their lords, ministers, nobles and knights. Then there was the worker class like peasants, smiths etc.

baybal2 4y ago

forinti 4y ago

This is just bizarre and makes no sense in the 21st century. We're long over the monarchy (although we haven't changed the flag, few people know what it stands for). It's just some made-up symbolism from this brain dead reactionary government.