The Heart is an organ that is responsible for pumping blood through the circulatory system.

In humans, the heart is usually found on the left side of the thorax, underneath a bone called the breastbone. The human heart has four chambers, a left and right atrium, and left at right ventricle. Connected to the lungs, the heart helps re-oxygenate blood before supplying it to the rest of the body.

The Vulcan heart is positioned differently than that of the human heart, located on the right side of the body underneath the lung. (Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual). Doctor McCoy, treating Commander Spock after he had been shot, remarked that Spock would have died if his heart had not been where the liver was in a human.(TOS episode: "A Private Little War") Captain Ronald Tracey later used the fact that the Vulcan heart was in a different location in an attempt to prove to the people of Omega IV that Spock was the devil, and that because of this Spock had no heart. (TOS episode: "The Omega Glory").

In Malcorians, the heart is located in the area of the body where the digestive organs would be in a human body, and the digestive organs are where a human's heart would normally be. Malcorian doctors treating a disguised Commander William Riker were unable to find a heart beat where they expected, and were surprised to find a heart beat in his upper chest. (TNG episode First Contact).

The Klingon heart was, like the rest of the major organs, designed with a high degree of redundancy, having eight chambers. (TNG episode Ethics).

The heart is one of the most vital organs in a humannoid body. A serious injury to the heart can be life threatening, and hummanoids cannot live without a functional heart. By the 24th century artificial hearts were used routinely to replace hearts that quit functioning due to disease or were otherwise damaged. Captain Jean-Luc Picard's heart was replaced after he was stabbed directly though the heart by a Nausicaan during a brawl. (TNG episode Samaritan Snare). Later, when the heart of Captain Kira Nerys was damaged by Taran'atar, Doctor Julian Bashir was unable to repair the heart, and was forced to replace it with an artificial heart. (DS9 novel Warpath).

See AlsoEdit

• Heart article at Memory Alpha, the wiki for canon Star Trek.
• Heart article at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.