Size, Shape and Location of the Heart.  --In this beautiful anatomical chart we obtain an accurate idea of the relative size, shape and position of that wonderful engine, the heart, his tireless efforts to keep the wheels of life and motion are truly surprising, and fill us with amazement at the prodigious work at daily performs.  The heart is in your regular, pear-shaped hollow, muscular organ, placed obliquely in the lower in front part of the chest, between the two lungs and inclining to the left of the centre. the bases directed toward the spine and corresponds with the fourth and fifth dorsal spine bone, while the apex points between the cartilages of the fifth and sixth ribs on the left side.  In this illustration the pericardium, or loose sac in which the heart is enclosed, is removed and we see the coronary artery with its branches distributed over the outer surface of the complex and restless organ.

This section wasn't written to poorly, or maybe a better way to say this is that it seems to stood the test of time fairly well.  Second sentence got a little bit wordy and again I would suspect a paid by the word contract, but in general this was fairly descriptive and fairly on point.  You might notice the spelling of the word centre spelled with an 're' as opposed to an 'er' I suspect that may be one of those variations in spelling that have occurred over the centuries. Otherwise it was fairly tame.  The chart that they're referring to his Chart 2 by the way.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• The Toes
  
  

  The Toes. — the toes are observed to be straightforward and align with the general contour of the foot. This is their natural position. The beautiful outlet of the natural foot, is here represented in the several different views, the graceful arch of the instep the elegance of its form, it’s marvelous elasticity and string all combine to make the foot that only of great perfection in beauty, but admirably did it for the manifold duties is called upon to perform. Man, in his diversified labors and very trials throughout life, is sometimes obliged to walk, run, jump, leap, climb, stand erect, lean forward, etc., and he depends upon the foot to maintain his equilibrium in the performance of the several duties.

  This section provides us with a great deal of non-information about the toes that your average 4 year old intuits without having to verbalize and often verbalizes none-the-less.  This section might as well offer up an auto insurance quote advertisement as opposed to supposedly providing medical education information on appendages attached to our feet.

• The Head Lice – Treatment
  
  

  The Head Lice.—They are grayish in color with blackish margins and show a reddish tinge due to the blood they have sucked from their victim. The eggs or nits are seen attached to the hair shafts on the scalp at some distance from the end of the hair and are tiny white or grayish pear-shaped bodies seen upon close examination.

  The treatment today, 100 years after this treatment was written in the Book of Medicine, things are not a great deal easier.  Its not like a person can even brush their hair with some sort of device that would zap head lice like air can be purified with an IQAir filter.

  TREATMENT.-It is necessary to remove eggs and adults at the same time, so wet the hair thoroughly with crude petroleum (from any drug store) keep hair wet for three hours, then wash whole head with warm water and soap. Repeat this wash once a day for three successive days. The eggs can then be removed by combing the hair with a fine tooth comb wet with vinegar. Where possible the treatment can be made more thorough and permanent if the hair is cut short.

• Cause of Goitre
  
  

  Cause of Goitre. — the swelling of the thyroid gland in the neck, producing the repulsive deformity of Goitre, or Derby Shire neck, seems to be intimately connected with mineral impurities and water. In Nottingham England, where this disease is not unfrequently met with, the common people attribute it to the hardness of the water, and in other parts of Great Britain is found to prevail only, or at least especially, in those districts where the magnesium limestone formation abounds.

   

  Okay I have to admit that this time I had no idea what goiter was, or why it was spelled with what appears to be a French spelling. But I was curious and so I decided to look it up on Wikipedia.  When I did this, I found thisdisturbing pictureof a woman with an extremely swollen neck.

  So as I look this up on Wikipedia, I learned that basically this disease occurs due to a lack of iodine.  It’s not caused by the presence of chemicals as thought 100 years ago,but by the absenceof iodine in a person’s diet.

  Today salt is commonly fortified with iodine, which helps to prevent the spread of this disease.

   

   

  Here’s an interesting history on the treatment of goitre from Wikipedia, which might help with this and more perspective.

  Chinese physicians of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) were the first to successfully treat patients with goiter by using the iodine-rich thyroid gland of animals such as sheep and pigs—in raw, pill, or powdered-mixture-in-wine form.^[1] This was outlined in Zhen Quan’s (died 643 AD) book, as well as several others.^[2] One Chinese book (i.e. The Pharmacopoeia of the Heavenly Husbandman) asserted that iodine-rich sargassum was used to treat goiter patients by the 1st century BC, but this book was written much later.^[3]

  In the 12th century, al-Jurjani, a Persian physician, provided the first description of Graves’ disease after noting the association of goitre and exophthalmos in his Thesaurus of the Shah of Khwarazm, the major medical dictionary of its time.^[4][5] Al-Jurjani also established an association between goitre and palpitation.^[6] The disease was later named after Irish doctor Robert James Graves,^[7] who described a case of goiter with exophthalmos in 1835. The German Karl Adolph von Basedow also independently reported the same constellation of symptoms in 1840, while earlier reports of the disease were also published by the Italians Giuseppe Flajani and Antonio Giuseppe Testa, in 1802 and 1810 respectively,^[8] and by the English physician Caleb Hillier Parry (a friend of Edward Jenner) in the late 18th century.^[9]

  Paracelsus (1493–1541) was the first person to propose a relationship between goitre and minerals (particularly lead) in drinking water.^[10] Iodine was later discovered by Bernard Courtois in 1811 from seaweed ash.

  Goitre was previously common in many areas that were deficient in iodine in the soil. For example, in the English Midlands, the condition was known as Derbyshire Neck. In the United States, goitre was found in the Great Lakes, Midwest, and Intermountain regions. The condition now is practically absent in affluent nations, where table salt is supplemented with iodine. However, it is still prevalent in India,^[11] Central Asia and Central Africa.

  Some health workers fear that a resurgence of goitre might occur because of the trend to use rock salt and/or sea salt, which has not been fortified with iodine. New research indicates that there may in fact be a tendency to inherit an increased vulnerability to goitre.

   

  Interesting, but I’m glad we figured out the cause and the solution for this one.  Next up, Viagra and acne cream,   just kidding seems like we’ve covered some of the more serious things over the last hundred years and now fiddling around with less serious things.