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:

  • Water in All Substances

    Water in All Substances.—Water was considered by the ancient philosophers as one of the four elements out of which all visible objects were constructed ; and, in reality, it enters to a greater or less extent into the composition of nearly all natural substances. Thus, for example, some vegetables, like cabbage or celery, contain as much as ninety-five per cent. of water ; and, on the other hand, close-grained marble may contain as much as four per cent. of water, or almost a quart to the cubic yard. On account of its remarkable solvent powers, which enable it to take up a smaller or larger quantity of nearly every substance with which it comes in contact, water is never found pure in a natural state; and, indeed, absolutely pure water for chemical purposes can only be obtained by repeated careful distillations.

    Its hard to imagine that for your every day person, the concept that liquids were often comprised of water as opposed to be a completely different substance all together was relatively new.  People may have suspected, but many scientists had not confirmed (or reconfirmed) this fact and they were just beginning to put together the concept of atoms and how they might form together.  So for some people this apparently obvious paragraph today might have been as foreign if not more to them as a digital cameras function might have been 50 or 100 years ago.

  • Wonderful It All Is

    Wonderful It All Is.–Wonderful!  Within us is an Almighty Architect, who superintends a thousand skilled laborers, that make a way which puzzles human comprehension; theory fiber of muscle; they are a filament of nerve; here constructing a bone; they are uniting attendant — fashioning each with the most scrupulous care and unerring nicety.  Without the buzz of a saw, or the sound of a hammer; without the slightest compression, or the least particle of boys; with a regularity, certainty and exactness, the glorious temple of man, in the image of his Creator, goes up and up, day by day, skilfully put together by these noiseless, tireless and expert workman.

     

    First off it like to point out that this section utilizes the words “superintends” and it spells the words ’skilfully’ with one ‘l’ in skill.  These two spelling items or word usages seem to be a good illustration of the change of spelling and vocabulary over a hundred years.  I’ve read thousands of books never seen the word superintends in print before.  I’ve never seen the word skillfully printed with one L. either.

     

    Second, this section is definitely full of nonsecular references.  It’s the closing paragraph of this particular section that was several pages long covering the digestive apparatus and its wonders.  This section seems to have included more information about the wonders than the actual digestive apparatus, which would have been suitable for a Bible but not necessarily for a medical textbook.

     

    Finally this section has a number of crazy references again which seems to capitalize on the last two or three sections that were full of gibberish that were put there for no apparent purpose whatsoever other than to fill pages with print.

  • Positive Thinking, Positive Environmental Factors and Your Health

    So I am on a road trip this weekend, and I’m heading to St. Louis from the Atlanta area. I’m using voice recognition software to write this article, and I don’t really have access to the book of medicine while driving.

    Voice recognition allows me to write articles with a hands-free headset and so basically I can have a conversation with myself and it appears as an article to you!

    I’ve seen a few dozen or a least a half dozen, I may be exaggerating, fender bender’s on the interstate today including one vehicle fire which was pretty massive. It did appear that everyone was okay. There are a lot of carpet, textile, and home lighting stores and warehouses on this section of I75 leaving Atlanta.

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    Regardless the damage to vehicles was definitely done and there are going to be a lot of people heading up to body supply shops for new auto parts.

    So I’m getting ready to head up the mountains or head up into the mountains as I leave Chattanooga behind and head towards Nashville on Interstate 24. It is a stretch of 24 where you wind your way up and around a great big mountain, your ears start popping, and the temperature drops a couple degrees, if you’re lucky (in the summer).

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    Then you go rapidly downhill on the other side ears popping again all the way. It’s a beautiful part of the country and I mention that here in this blog because I do believe it’s important for your health to live in beautiful areas. Beauty will not keep you from getting sick and beauty won’t necessarily make you better, but I do feel that it can lift your spirits up. When you are thinking positively and feeling positively you have a better chance of recuperating and healing. I haven’t seen anything like that in the book of medicine yet, but I suspect that they’ll cover this as the book is not always scientific and often takes moral tones.

    Regardless I hope you are having a good weekend or had a good weekend and I’ll have more articles straight from the book of medicine soon.

 

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