On turning over this flap we are brought face to face with a grim looking but useful object -- the framework of the trunk and arms. The skeleton is of a ghastly appearance and emblematic of death; it's unsightly look sends a thrill of poor through us, and we instinctively recoil from it. Yet at some serves a useful purpose in the human body, and the ugly looking bones, when carefully examined, abound in nice contrivances and ingenious workmanship; whilst each individual bonus design for the a special duty it has to perform. Hence the bones different forms; some are long, as in the arms and legs; some are short and thick, giving strength and compactness, as in the lumbar portion of the spine; some are flat, for covering a cavity, as the school and pelvis, and others used for special purpose or irregular, is in the hands and feet.just when I thought the book was getting a slightly bit dull, this little section popped out at me as we start to read into some of the peculiar notions the author had regarding the skeletal system. Various phrases such as "thrill of poor" and "ghastly appearance and emblematic of death" rapidly depart from the tone you would expect from a medical journal or book. The author goes halfway through the paragraph before they start to get down to the actual topic at hand and shy away from their romantic notions about how scary a skeleton looks. It makes me wonder just how much or how little your average person back in the early 1900s may have been exposed to views that included pictures of the skeleton. Back then there was no TV nor cartoons even to introduce children to the funny side of skeletons, there was no Halloween where children dressed up like skeletons. The skull and cross bones probably had a much more sinister visual impact on people and to see a skeleton in real life or even in a picture may have been more dramatic. It definitely seems peculiar here.
Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:
- Quantity and Variety of Foods
Quantity and Variety of Foods. — as we have already seen, the human body consists of numerous mechanics or artisans, who are constantly at work repairing and upbuilding the unceasing destruction that is continually going on. If fresh food be not daily supplied, this work would soon cease, and the lamp of life flicker out. To replace this constant waste we required nearly 3 pounds of solid food, and fully 3 pounds of liquid food for our daily allowance. But to convert the pent-up energies of bread, meat and vegetables into the tissues of our own mechanism require a number of differently constructed organs, and these we now desire to draw your attention to this beautiful chart. The organs consist of the stomach, liver, pancreas and intestines, which comprise the principal organs concerned in the process of digestion.
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In 2007 I can hardly imagine what eating 3 pounds of food a day might be like, and I tend to eat a lot having a very high metabolism. For example I had two waffles for breakfast, two products on hot dog buns for supper and to bananas today. I think the total of all that food combined may have been a pound for pound and a half if you don’t count the banana peels. To put it differently, I can’t quite imagine eating six half pound cheeseburgers every day. Not to mention the half pound cheeseburgers that you get a fast food place like Wendy’s, are weighed before they’re cooked and not after. So a half pound cheeseburgers going to weigh less when you eat it because they took out some of the crease and fat, but probably not enough.
Drinking 3 pounds of liquid definitely caught my attention. There have been many references over the years to the US nutritional food pyramid. By many accounts the pyramid has been traced to some Washington, DC bureaucrat that came up with a concept that a person needs to drink eight glasses of water every day. To my knowledge, no one has come up with any scientific basis for why that Washington bureaucrat would chose an eight glasses as opposed to five or 10, or even just stating that a person should drink as often as they are thirsty. Now I’m curious to learn if 3 pounds of water equates to approximately 8 glasses of water. This book was published in 1916 and the food pyramid was was written up in the 1930s approximately 14 years later.
Is it possible that I found an early reference in this medical textbook that may have been the basis for that quackery prescribing eight glasses of water every day?
It definitely could be possible as this to tomb of a book was definitely reference material that I could envision a bureaucrat pulling off a shelf of the Library of Congress, what better book than the Library of Health to be found in the Library of Congress. I don’t expect ultimately be accredited with finding the source for that quackery anymore than you or I expect to find a publisher’s clearing House letter in our Mailboxes containing an actual check for $1 million.
- The Opening of a Volume of Medical History – Library of Health
This is the opening pages, an introduction to the Library of Health. The book was originally edited by Benjamin Frank Scholl,Ph.G., M.D. and Anne McFarland Sharp B.A., M.D. and Frank E. Miller, A.M., M.D.
The opening sequence reads as follows:
Wide Thanks to those that Have Gone Before
the use of home medical books has now become general and they are recognized as being just as essential to the protection of the family, the care of health, the prevention of disease, the care beyond; and giving assistance in the absence of the doctor, and in preventing unnecessary sickness and suffering in the starving of life itself, as the scientific textbooks are essential to the position.
This knowledge is not intended to make doctors out of Lehman or to encourage self-medication except in emergency.it aims to teach prevention rather than cure.it is a well known fact that over 50%. Of the sickness that comes to the home is unnecessary and preventable if the people have the proper knowledge. The right kind of information in the hands of the mother will prevent unnecessary sickness, take care of accidents in emergencies, and save thousands of lives, when the doctor cannot be reached in time; it also teaches the care and nursing of the sick and the rearing of the children and thousands of homes that cannot afford a professional nurse.
It may be said that during the past five years the treatment and cure of many diseases has entirely change; but more important discoveries and new and successful methods for the curing of disease have been proven and adopted during this time than in any similar. During the past century. The old method of treating fever was by shutting the patient a tight room, smothering him with Bud clothing, allowing no ice water, and dosing with medicine. The latest treatment whether the favor as typhoid and its character, pneumonia or malaria fever, is to have the patient covered lightly with a sheet, the room perfectly ventilated and the temperature largely controlled by a external applications.
Measles is not treated by simple methods. The treatment for scarlet fever is materially changed and fatalities greatly reduced. So we might mention many others. It is not too much to say that the mortality of all diseases has been diminished greatly by the new treatments and nursing adopted within the last five years. The tendency of modern treatment is tor preventive medicine and careful nursing.
Of every 1000 babies born in this century, 124 die before they are a year old. An average of 300,000 babies under-year-old died yearly in the United States the past few years. Half of this number could have been saved of every mother and every home knew how to take proper precaution, and give proper care nursing.
The child should be exposed to any disease — for instance, the measles — the “Library” tells you just how many days before the rash appears and how it can affect others exposed to it. By having this information the mother can call the doctor and Time Inc. and more intelligently assessed and cooperate with him.
Then just think of the accidents that are happening every day in the doctor may be miles away. We given the “Library” the quickest, best in the most efficient treatments and accidents in emergencies, in the absence of a doctor, and it is the duty of everyone to know what to do for the first aid to the sick and injured. Someone should take poison — for instance, “carbolic acid” or “Lye,” which are very common in the home — perhaps your child takes a drink of one of them by mistake. You call the doctor and by the time he gets there it may be too late, but by turning to “POISONS,” you find, “For Caroblic Acid take Epsom Salts,” and “for Lye take Oil.” this information may save a life.
And so on with every kind of emergency. They happen every day, especially with children. There’s never a wash day that passes of the land but what there are numbers of cases of children getting hold of ammonia. If you’re the one took a swallow from the ammonia bottle, you couldn’t grab it in your arms the moment it screamed and ran two blocks to the doctor in time to do any good, but you could grab the vinegar bottle — but those handy — and give a good swallow vinegar, which will immediately counteract the ammonia. No home should be without such information.
What would you do in the absence of the doctor? Ask yourself a question about health or life and turn to the “Library” for your answer.
did you ever stop to think that one could bleed to death in three to seven minutes, before you could get medical help? Here’s given the simplest and best information on just where to press, to stop the flow of blood from any part of the body; and if you know just how, you can stuff it with your own thumb or finger or by using a simple turn it until you can procure assistance; then you can wait for the doctor — powers, if necessary.
It is only too true the large majority of our women are raised in an atmosphere of false modesty that prevents them from having the necessary knowledge to take proper care of themselves and avoid various diseases and disorders. Thousands of women have questions they would like answered that they will not ask a local physician on account of embarrassment, also expense, and this information is absolutely essential to their personal health. These minor troubles through neglect of 10 times become chronic and incurable, while, if taken at the start, they are easy to remedy.
Watch carefully every little headache, cough, choke, pain or fever — they may lead to something serious. Prevention is better than cure and prevention begins at home. the index under the HEADINGS will direct you to the proper place, where you can obtain the information you need to guide you.
The mother is the one who looks after the health of the family. The mother is with the children 24 hours in the day and feels most responsible case of sickness. That is why the “Library” is placed in the homes — IT IS FOR THE WIFE and FOR THE MOTHER.
If the husband comes home sick, or a child is ill, the wife is expected to the nursing. How is she going to do this if she never had any experience with sickness? The nursing department will tell her. It teaches how to make poultices, ointments, blasters, Serbs, etc.; how to change the sheets, making the patient comfortable, and how to be the sick. Of the most folly to the sick room is the nurse; she should understand how to prepare food and diet for the particular ailment of the patient, and to assist the doctor and battling with disease and restoring health. “Slobbery of Health”gives you all this information in a plane, practical way that anyone can understand.
Knowing from our experience that the medical specialists and teachers who stand at the head of their profession right and language of technical expression, it has been necessary for the publishers to seek the services of a competent editorial staff, who put the technical and scientific knowledge and a plain practical form, so that anyone can understand.
we wish to extend wide thanks to the contributors to this work into the professors, positions, specialists and lecturers of universities and colleges throughout the world, so of whom have gone before, and the recognized standard home medical works published in England, Germany, France, Spain, in America, from whom our editors have gleaned as follows:
Book Targets Audience of Mothers and House Wives slated to be Defacto Nurses
I will pause as the book then proceeds to list approximately 30 some doctors physicians and specialists in many other areas I will come back and fill in these names a later date. So that’s the opening of the book, and right away I is find it rather interesting the assumptions that the book makes right off the bat. The book assumes that women and in particular wives are housewives are destined for the role of nursemaid. And that they should read this book to be prepared for the medical situation that will arise in the family based on the presumption that next presumption that a doctor or hospital will not be close at hand or readily available. Obviously the book was written at a time of emergency services had neither been conceived yet.
Changes in Perils to the Family in the United States
In addition it’s interesting for the perspective that many of the assumptions of the problems that can impact children are families have changed somewhat. Washes and done on a wash day using ammonia anymore. And measles isn’t as prevalent as it used to be throughout the world. Possibly more striking is the number of infant deaths mentioned hundred and 124 deaths out of a 1,000 seems like a very high number at a comparison to today’s numbers.
Today we complain that infant death rates are not going down fast enough. Our infant death rates for infants that were successfully born through a live birth is 6.8 incidents per 1000 in 2003. it is not surprising that we’ve come a long way in almost 100 years. However consider the impact on families and people and individuals close to a hundred years ago when awas so much more likely to die shortly after birth or during its first year of life.
- THE CLITORIS, URETHRA, VAGINA AND HYMEN.
These female organs show further at the perfection which anatomical plate printing has attained.
Clitoris.—This small organ, it will be seen, is situated at the upper part of the Volvo, or outside parts of the female generative system, it is usually concealed by the lips of the pudenda. It performs a function during sexual intercourse similar to that performed by the penis of the male.
Urethra.–This highly useful organ, common to both sexes, is, as will be seen by the plate, now, or medium, by means of which the urine is carried from the bladder to be voided. It is a delicately lined organ, furnished with retentive valves, and therefore susceptible to a variety of diseases.
Vagina.–This word implies a chief, and is applied to the can out which leads from the uterus (womb) to the external organs of generation in the female sex. Commonly, it implies such external organs, or organ, as depicted in the plate.
Hymen.–The mucous membrane, or virginal membrane, at the entrance of the female sexual organ, or vagina.
In general the author skips through the section very rapidly in a no-nonsense business or away. There is no alliteration, and no religious references. That is not surprising as this was written just after the turn of the century when discussions of these particular topics are not carried out in public and rarely between men and women in public, let alone in a book designed to teach both men and women. Keep in mind, that this book came out 40 to 50 years before the Kinsey studies and books on sexual practices were done and written about. Medicine and Society at a long way to go from this point in time when this section was written.