For much of the 19^th century “enquiry into the function of the different tissues of the animal body has been marked by a general tendency to exalt the importance of Nerve and correspondingly to deprecate the powers of Muscle”¹. In the case of the frog heart, the demonstrably most rhythmic sinus venosus had been recognized as the origin of each beat², but the spring of automaticity was long considered to reside not in the muscular component of that chamber but in ganglion cells buried within it. Against this background, the myogenic theory of cardiac automaticity advocated by Foster^3,4, Gaskell^5,6, and McWilliam^7,8 was slow to gain acceptance over the neurogenic theory. The socio-economic factors that arguably played a part in stoking this prolonged controversy will be recalled. And some lessons for the Body Politic that may be drawn from modern discoveries on the mechanism of pacemaking will be explored.