Q&A

Muse, Apr 2004 by Coontz, Robert, Spector, Rosanne

Q How did the heart come to symbolize love? Wasn't the original organ of love the liver? While we're on the heart thing, why is it drawn the way it is? It doesn't look anything like a human heart.

-Dana M., age 18, Washington

A The heart hasn't always symbolized love. For instance, in A.D. 200, the Alexandrian physician Galen thought the heart was the source of courage and that love came from, yep, that's right, the liver. The heart's link to love seems to have begun in Europe during the Middle Ages, where the heart symbol appeared on church stained-glass windows and other Christian religious artworks, representing Jesus' love for mankind.

That "valentine" heart symbol has been around since the early 1300s. Pierre Vinken, author of The Shape of the Heart, says that the symbol is the result of early 14th-century Italian illustrators' efforts to draw a human heart without having seen one. Dissection of human corpses was outlawed by Greek and Roman law and throughout the Middle Ages, so almost no one really knew what a human heart looked like. Instead they relied on descriptions by Galen and the Greek philosopher Aristotle. And since their descriptions weren't exactly perfect, neither were the drawings.

-Rosanne

Q Can mosquitoes pass any kind of virus, like flu, smallpox, or AIDS?

-Bethany S., age 11, California

A My friend Martin Enserink, who recently wrote a long article about mosquito-borne diseases for the journal Science, jumped at the chance to answer this question. Here's what he wrote: "Only a couple of virus diseases, such as West Nile and yellow fever, are transmitted by mosquitoes. That's because these viruses are very special; they have learned how to survive inside a mosquito's gut, and how to make their way to its saliva, where they can infect us when the mosquito bites us. Those tricks give mosquito-borne viruses the ability to spread even in places where people live far apart. If your neighbors live two kilometers away and you never visit them, they can't give you the flu; but they could still give you yellow fever, if a mosquito flew from their house to yours."

-Robert

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