Vitality of the Heart.  -- its vitality is as amazing as its strength.  While life exists this tireless order never stops.  In disease, as long as a flutter of this wondrous organ exists, we know the spark of life is not altogether vanished, and new Hope is begotten that helped me be restored.  Airing such long lives as we sometimes see, the heart has propelled no less than 500,000 tons of blood; and yet, during all this patient, unfaltering and unflinching labor, it is her.  Self as the waste has occurred. Heart Rhythms.  --the rhythm of its beats never fails until death breaks into the casket and seizes the ever thriving pendulum at the command of the great Master Workman,  silencing the quivering muscles of the heart and compelling the wheels of like a standstill.

___________ This closes out the introduction to the workings of the heart, and the author ends the section talking about heartbeats or heart rhythms, but in doing so doesn't talk about heart rhythms or heartbeats at all.  Notice the capitalize reference to Master Workman.  I'm sure would've been some sort of sacrilege not to capitalize those two words and so they are capitalized.  But it's still a little bizarre.  Next section were heading into the digestive system, which is probably just as mysterious to the author as the working of the heart!

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• Colon Cleanser on Public Health Forum
  
  

  Now I cover a lot of items that seem a little peculiar culturally speaking. Today, I happened across PublicHealthForums.com. One of their sub-forums is a Bowtrol Forum. People show up to the forum to get Bowtrol Reviews and try and decide whether or not they should Buy Bowtrol.

  Now I mention this because one of the people visiting the form asked the perfectly logical question:

  I have a question. I just ordered a two months supply. My husband is afraid to try the product during working hours. Will it cause discomfort during the day? Any cramping, diarrhea, or other extremes?

  That is definitely a reasonable question for a colon cleanser. Culturally speaking I wonder what people will think about this type of Social Networking in the future. In many ways the Library of Health is a book that published the accumulated medical knowledge of the time to distribute to people around the country. It was a codification of medical practices and possibly word of mouth knowledge and herbal lore even.

  Not so different than people coming together to work out a best practice solution for the usage of a medical product or treatment today.

• 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.

  _____

  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. . . .

• Insects As Common Carriers
  
  

  Insects As Common Carriers.- great strides have been made in recent years by scientists in regards to the further prevention of disease by studying the life habits of insects.  It has been clearly proven that the poison or germ of certain diseases are carried by them, such as tuberculosis, typhoid fever, bowel complaints of children, by the common housefly; malaria and yellow fever by the mosquito; the bubonic plague by the rat flea, of which there are several varieties, and the squirrel flea, of which there are also several.

  It is easily understood that to prevent the spread of a contagious disease from one individual to another, the precautions are not complete unless he or she be protected against either the bite of a mosquito or fleet which is received into its own blood the poison or the germ causing the disease, which conveys by biting another person.  Fly should be kept out as, by coming in contact with the spittle or discharges from a patient, they carry the germ of poison upon their feet, etc. to the food, milk, water and by direct contact to another person.

  As to aid in the prevention of disease, the numerous boards of health of city and state have issued regulations and instructions whereby these insects can be destroyed and then every person, sick or well, can be protected.  If well, the flight is a danger by bringing disease into her home, if ill, it can convey our disease to another screen is home and start an epidemic.

  There is distinctly different set of priorities that are being covered in this book than those we might consider today.  Typically malaria for example is only known in the tropics, but that definitive line on the globe might not have been known about back then.  Installing screens on Windows had a dual benefit of keeping out mosquitoes as well as flies.  Today we might worry about getting a discount on budget software or spending less time in traffic, but back then mosquitoes had much larger impact on the lives of people in the west much as the same insects have a great impact on people that live in Africa today.