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.