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

History of the Book of Medicine

April 26th, 2007 at 9:15 am

Chart II – THE INTERNAL WONDERS OF THE HUMAN BODY REVEALED

CHART II

THE INTERNAL WONDERS OF THE HUMAN BODY REVEALED

THE HUMAN BODY AND ITS MARVELOUS PERFECTION

Wonderful Structure of the Body -- The human body is the highest form of animal life.  It is full of beautiful proportions and divinely symmetrical in shape, form, mould and outline.  We look with honest pride and glowing admiration upon the many accomplishments that man is achieved in the world around us.  We see is skill displayed in the various arts and sciences, and we look with awe upon the projects of his intellect and reason, the realization of which is but a small question of time!  We boast of our ships, our steamboats and our steam cars; we are justly proud of our bridges, our viaducts and the progress of our engineering skill; we grow enthusiastic over our telegraphs, our telephones, our electric lights; we feel a degree of national pride in the achievements in successes of Edison, the wizard of Menlo Park; aware, let us ask, in the whole range of events, the acquirements of arts, the attainments of engineering, or the successes and promises of electrical sciences, can we find such an other structure as the human body, that curious, yet perfect world of wonders!

As we closed up the section on chart 1, I marveled at the lack of verbosity (apparently it's contagious upon reading this book) that the author had foregone.  The author must have sensed the fact that they missed an opportunity and rapidly work to make it up in the titles of this section and in this opening paragraph.  The flowery language is definitely back.

Even more interesting are several anecdotes about the moral goals and accomplishments of the human race that distinctly date the book.  The author describes steamboats and steam cars as existing technologies and not technologies are long dead.  The author then goes on to describe new technologies such as electric lights, telephones, and even telegraphs, which are technologies that today are either dead or dying.  The author even speaks of Thomas Edison in a way that makes you think that Thomas Edison is actually alive or just recently passed, possibly someone at the author even knew.  For the record Thomas Edison did not pass away until 1931, and so the author was in fact dropping a name of a living hero to technology into the advances of not only science but practical applications of science. 

Today we might mention people like Steve Wozniak or Steve Jobs were Bill Gates as people that are brought a modern marvel of technology in the personal computer into the homes and offices and/or rooms of almost every person in the United States.  In fact it's probably more similar in that they did this from our perspective 27 to 30 years ago, this book was written in 1916, but earlier drafts had been written since the 1860s.  So in fact this book survived during the approximate timeframe that Thomas Edison survived, and at the time of this particular writing the lightbulb had been in existence for about 30 years.  I believe it was invented in 1878 in this book was written in 1916 so that's actually about 38 years. 

Comparably this is 2007 as I'm writing this today and the personal computer was invented somewhere between 1972 and 1976 depending on which organization or person you credit for creating the personal computer.  My personal vote goes to Xerox and the Palo Alto research Center which created essentially a desktop computer which they showed off to people like Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.  Like Edison our modern-day trio largely improved upon inventions and innovations created by others.  There are a number of remarkable similarities in that regards.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

  • Cause for Bright’s Disease

    Cause for Bright’s Disease. — it has long seemed probable that the increasing prevalence of that terribly fatal malady, "Bright’s disease," especially in cities and large towns, maybe due to the poisonous effects of exceeding minute quantities of lead, dissolved from the lead pipes so generally employed as service conduits, notwithstanding the protective coating, which usually forms so promptly upon them.

    In the year 2008, this paragraph would seem like something rather obvious. But it is remarkable to look back in time and see how people consider the potential for this problem to exist, before science had proven it out. We sometimes forget that our knowledge is built on many many different precursors and actions that were taken before we came to be. Humanity learns its lessons from the people that come before it and the actions that they take. Sometimes they learn those lessons quickly, and sometimes they learned those lessons very slowly, whether they are trying to understand lead poisoning or come up with better egg nog recipes. This is one of the reasons why history is so important for us to study, not only do we get to learn some of the items from the past to avoid making the same mistakes, we get to learn how people in the past recognize the problem and dealt with it so that we can recognize and deal with new problems today.

  • The Veins

    The Veins.–The venal arteries are derived direct from the aorta; and the large veins terminate in the ascending large vein. On the right kidney is seeing the super-renal capsule; whilst the left is cut vertically into showing the uriniferous tubes, much convoluted and inosculating with each other.  The ureter is seen arising from the pelvis of the kidney, descending in an oblique manner to the bladder.  These wonderful little organs appear to act as filters, and thus assist to keep the vital stream of life and as pure and as healthy a condition as possible.

    The Bladder.–The bladder is a thin, membranous bag, which serves as he receiver of the year and secreted by the kidneys, and which remains there until voided by your nation through the urethra.

    Bone Sections.– the sections of the bones show their cancellated appearance, which combines lightness with strength.

     

    As I was putting together the section and transcribing it from the book, the translation software had quit the difficulty with several of the words in this section.  Uriniferous actually stood out as eight extra troubling word.

  • 3 Very Different Reasons for Cosmetic Surgery

    As we review the history of medical instruction in the book of medicine, it becomes somewhat apparent that things were typically done more out of a need for necessity.  Sometimes the perspective was based on false premises, sometimes the science or medicine was wrong, and sometimes the wrong treatment was utilized, but one commonality seems to be the perceived necessity.  One hundred years ago when surgical procedures were not much better than they were 1,000 years ago, you didn’t fix something that wasn’t broken and typically you didn’t fix something unless it was very broken.

    Today we fix things that are not broken all the time.  We fix things to make them better than they were originally.  ‘Better’ is loosely defined in medicine today. It can mean an aesthetic improvement or a functional improvement or a combination of the two.

    One sub niche of cosmetic surgery is ethnic plastic surgery. This area of medicine focuses on changing physical traits that are common to one ethnic group.  Sometimes that physical characteristic is changed in a way that reduces the perception of the trait being identifiable from that original ethnic source.

    Another niche of cosmetic surgery is a localized procedure for beverly hills breast reduction.  Breast augmentations are typically aesthetically driven, and they are usually augmented by increasing size or volume of the breast.  Some women choose to go the other direction.  Breast reductions can be driven by aesthetic purposes, but they can also be driven by functional purposes as well.  The reduction can reduce body weight and make movement and exercise more comfortable.

    A third niche of cosmetic surgery is los angeles liposuction.  This process is often cosmetic but does provide health benefits by reducing the straing on the heart and other systems.  Liposuction removes body fat from localized areas of the body.  It literally sucks the fatty tissue out of the body.  When people gain weight they can grow new fat cells.  When they loose weight they do not loose fat cells, the cells just get smaller.  Liposuction removes the fast cells, making it somewhat easier to maintain a new lower weight.

 

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