Changes in the Human Body. --The human body is in a constant state of change. In the midst of life there is death. The blood discs die and new ones are born into life. Every act of life is destructive as well as constructive. Not a thought can be evolved but numerous brain cells die; not a wink of an eye, a smell of a lovely rose, nor a muscular movement, but results in the death of some part of the machinery involved. Every process of life is a process of death. The scales of the epidermis are constantly falling off to be replaced by fresh cells from beneath, and it is on the continuance of this interchange that our life, health and vigor depends. The more rapidly this change goes on, and fresh, vigorous, healthy tissues take the place of the old lifeless ones, the more elasticity, buoyancy and strength we possess -- the more healthy and robust we become.________________ To a layman most of that last paragraph sounded like nonsense. Yes, cells do die and more cells are created throughout the human body. the author describes in a way that makes it sound like birth is given to the cells by other cells. I think the part the Mesa sound rather ludicrous is based on the author's assumption that there is a cause-and-effect. When you move a muscle according to the author's reasoning, that movement kills a muscle cell and births another muscle cell at the same time. Cells may be creating and dined at the same time but I don't believe it's from the exertion or the motion. That seems to be a fallacy in the logic from the statement.
Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:
- Size, Shape and Location of the Heart
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.
- Blood-vessels of the Liver
Blood-vessels of the Liver. –. The blood-vessels of the liver are the hepatic artery and veins, and the portal vein; the lymphatic vessels are numerous, and the nerves are supplied from the pneumogastric, the phrenic and the hepatic plexus. The liver, therefore, receives two kinds of blood: the arterial, by means of the hepatic artery, and the venous, from the portal vein, from which the bile is principally formed. The bile is a dark golden fluid, of extremely bitter taste, of which 3 pounds is secreted daily. When not used in digestion is stored away in the gall-bladder; a fine view of the location of which we have in this chart, the action of the bile on food, but not fully understood, is necessary for perfect digestion.
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Again there is a reference to 3 pounds daily. So now I’m wondering if the 3 pounds of bile that our bodies are supposedly creating everyday is related to the 3 pounds of food or 3 pounds of liquid that were supposed to be consuming. Maybe it’s half-and-half, 1 1/2 pounds of food and one half pounds of water generate 3 pounds of bile secreted from our liver.
I wouldn’t bet your vacation home Orlando on it. I’m also curious as to whether or not the author actually tasted bile from a liver. In many ways I’m glad I was not a scientist a hundred or 200 years ago. . . .
- The Ovaries
The Ovaries.– The organs are situated contiguously to the womb. They signify eggs from their shape, and they are the parts which the male semen acts upon to produce the phenomenon of pregnancy. They are in large eye inflammation in their passage down the fallopian tubes, once a month during the middle. A female life, produces the condition familiarly known as menstruation. The plate also affords another view of the vagina.
And that is a pretty short paragraph to describe the process of reproduction. I believe it would be difficult to describe this process any more succinctly or with any less detail especially a medical textbook. It’s with short descriptions like this, that I wonder how on the world the author ever manage to squeeze 1700 pages out of a medical textbook.
Sometimes I wonder if the short nondescriptive descriptions might have been more prevalent a hundred years ago and possibly super prevalent even further back. Maybe there was something lingering in the human psyche from the days when monks transcribed books by hand that led authors to avoiding words. If it wasn’t for this author’s ability to spot on with a lot of gibberish whenever he feels like it, I might suspect such a thing. The fact that the author did not use a lot of language here leads me to believe that the author was avoiding the topic.
If ancient authors and written descriptions about to sail from Europe to India across the ocean in a similar style, it is no wonder that Columbus ended up only making it half way there suffering through a number of endless caribbean cruises before making landfall.
My point is that as you go back in time and read writing that was written years and years and years ago different things seem important. Different subjective requirements come in to play in the writing and in the reading. The lack of objectivity leaves future readers at a loss for the detail that they need to make heads or tails out of text and information. It’s an important example of why the objectivity is important in writing scientific information. The subject of writing is also important in the two can be balanced what they need to be labeled such that future readers will understand those items that were understood to be fact as opposed to those items that were still under speculation.