Reviewing the Medical Books and Journals that constituted Medical understanding a century back.

History of the Book of Medicine

April 21st, 2007 at 9:11 am

Bones of the Face – Spinal Collumn

Bones of the Face -- the bones of the face shown in this plate are the nasal bone, forming the arch of the nose, and malar, which gives prominence to the cheek, the upper jaw, containing the upper teeth, in the lower jaw, containing the under teeth.

The Spinal Column -- that portion of the spinal column noticed in the illustration consists of the cervical vertebrae.  Each vertebra is composed of a body, with seven spinous processes projecting from it.  The body is perforated by a ring, through which is seen running the spinal cord, giving off nerves between each separate bone.  A ring of cartilage is seen inserted between each separate vertebra, the object of which is to prevent any jar reaching the brain when we run, jump, walk or stumble.

This wraps up the discussion of chart 1.  Nothing sticks out at me from the section as we finish the description of chart 1.  As a possible exception in the fact that they've ended this section without any conclusion for follow-on or marks.  It seems that the author often times took extra steps to say more than was necessary in insert their awe inspired view of the world on the reader and seems to have forgotten to take the opportunity to close out this section with lofty language.  I'm sure we'll get a larger taste of this in the sections and chapters in books to follow.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

  • The Neck Muscles

    The next section sets out the goal of covering the Neck Muscles. As the section of the book is describing an image, it shouldn’t be assumed that this will entail the full discourse on these areas of the body. It’s much more likely that this is a simple overview of these areas and more details will follow as there are 1600 more pages to go. So as we read this we should look at this as the simple summary introduction of the professional doctor attempting to describe the subject matter of the human body to a laywoman as the book is set out to educate wives and mothers in the arts of family nursing.

    The neck muscles — this beautiful illustration brings out in bold relief is superficial and deep muscles of the neck, and, at the same time, we observe a faithful to litigation, not only of the relative position of the carotid artery and jugular vein, but also of the manner in which muscular and fleshy part of the neck receives its nervous supply.

    This is a short section wrapping up the primary section titled “the brain; and a vertical section of the face and neck.” Again this one paragraph mention something that was referenced in the previous paragraph. It references the idea of the nervous supply. The section that contain information on the “view of the eye” went into slight detail about the supply of nerves to the teeth, “we see the dental nerve distributing its nervous supply to their individual and collective roots,” and then again we see the same description of a nervous supply here in the section, “and fleshy part of the neck receives its nervous supply.”

    This reference to the nervous supply seems to describe something more than just a system of nerves as it might be described day and hints that a conceptual difference possibly stemming from a lack of knowledge about what the nervous system actually dozer performs. Scientists of the day were not ignorant of the electrical connections in the nervous system and the analogies to the movement of current, as many experiments have been done on animals and other systems of the day to identify the cause-and-effect associated with putting occurrence to a nerve for a muscle. To a certain degree this appears to be a choice of semantics probably utilized by the editors as opposed to an actual medical view. However based on the context that is not entirely possible to confirm or ascertain.

  • Mineral Springs

    Mineral Springs. — mineral springs, notwithstanding they are much used for drinking, are properly medicinal agents. They comprise all those waters which contain sufficient quantities of dissolved matters, such for example, as iron or sulfur, as to produce thereby a positive effect upon the systems of persons for taking of them. The mineral springs of this country are frequently valuable remedial agents and some chronic diseases.

     

    In this section they do kind of tell you something about the category and that this type of water has minerals or other matter that is dissolved in the water. It doesn’t happen to mention how those minerals may have a come to be there, such as those that are mingled with water by the Earth itself as opposed to water that is polluted by a person. In some regards I believe the author has at this point, deemed the actual term of mineral springs, to be a term that would be widely recognized by people and the author thereby hopes that the categorization of this type of water will take place in the readers mind such that the author or editor does not actually have to spell out why something is in a category at all. It’s a little backwards but almost like a person might expect that a living creature wearing baby clothes should be a baby as opposed to a dog dressed up in baby clothes. The assumption is that the object associated with something that is commonly known should lead the reader to accept categorization automatically. Again this is not terribly scientific and creates the imperative for an assumption, which might lead us to assume, that the author has not learned the lesson of making an ass out of you and me.

  • Lead Poison in Rural Districts

    Lead Poison in Rural Districts. — in rural districts, on the other hand, whenever Rainwater is used for drinking purposes, it is exceedingly liable to be contaminated with lead from lead lined cisterns, led service- or collection-pipes, lead ropes, or from the solder of tin roofs. As a rule, the purer the Rainwater, the greater is its action on lead with which it stands in contact; image hence, therefore, the presence of a minute quantity of some salt of sulfuric acid and water is of very great importance, and serves as an invaluable protection against lead poisoning to the human beings and animals who may employ it for drinking purposes.

     

     

    There are many sources for lead poisoning, chief among them is typically lead based paints.  However, today people also run the risk of exposure to heavy metals through many batteries from all those devices that require Nickel Cadmium or Lithium Ion batteries.  We don’t always think about what is going into our environment when we’re putting more laptop memory in a computer or buying a spare battery, not to mention all the cell phone batteries churning through landfill dumps each year.

 

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