THE DIGESTIVE APPARATUS AND ITS WONDERS Values of the Plates.  -- seeing is believing; nay, it is more, it is knowing and remembering.  The mere reading of his statement on any particular subject is not always advance our knowledge of the matter in question.  The observation of the facts, or its proper illustration by appropriate diagrams, such as we observed these anatomical charts to be, not only emphasizes the point considered, but aides us and remembering the principal features connected with the functions performed, does advancing our knowledge of the subject discussed, and educational progress is made.

_________________ In this section the author is referring to the medical charts and diagrams that come with the book.  This is actually an interesting excerpt.  I'm sure it was a bit of conventional wisdom that combining pictures with text would help people understand and learn.  Today I work in part as a MindManager trainer.  My manager is a software program that enables people to mind map on their computer.  My maps enable people to put text in words and pictures and colors together so that they can learn and digest the topic faster.  The interesting thing is in the 1960s a scientist won a Nobel peace prize for putting all that information together in proving that people do learn better when they look at pictures and colors as opposed to just flat black text.  I'm sure the monks of the dark ages could've probably confirm that, but it hadn't gone to the scientific process yet.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• Chart 1
  
  

  Here are several images captured with a digital camera covering Chart 1.

  
  
  
  
  

• Another Case of Infection (Cholera Reference to teawater pump in London 1854)
  
  

  Another Case of Infection.-Another famous illustration is found in the history of the "tea water pump" of broad Street, Near Golden square, London, which during the cholera visitation of 1854, killed nearly 500 persons in a single week, in one of the fashionable localities of the city. It has long been known that water containing five or six grains of lime and magnesium to the gallon is much to be preferred for making tea to water of any other quality.  This is because the line precipitates the astringent matter of the leaf, yet does not interfere with the solution of the desirable constituents; and hence certain wells which have the proper proportion of mineral matter come to be valued very highly by persons of nice taste.

  

  The images represent a tea water pump in New York(left) placed over a natural spring (right) that had existed in Manhattan long before Europeans came to the colonies and helped create situations where cholera could break out. 

  This reference to the 1854 Cholera outbreak would have been relatively recent in the minds of many.  It would have only been about 60 years old at the time of this articles printing, however, when this book was first published, it may have been referenced when the epidemic was only 20 – 30 years old possibly.  In terms of recency or relevancy, we today might have a similar perspective on the massacre at Jonestown or the Kennedy killing.  It would have made a much bigger impression on people that heard the news than say a case of food poisoning resulting from a problem with popcorn machines or something in a bar or movie theater.

• Quantity of Water Needed
  
  

  Quantity of Water Needed.-the quantity of water needed by man and animals must therefore be very carefully calculated. Repeated experiments upon a very extended scale in England have shown that a healthy man requires daily as drink from 2 to 4 pints of water, this amount being in addition to that which is swallowed as moisture and food. The amount required for cooking is estimated at from having gallantly gallon or more. To this quantity, Dr. Parkes considers should be added for daily ablution, including a sponge bath, 5 gallons; daily share of kitchen and other utensils, and house washing, 3 gallons; and share of clothes washing, another 3 gallons; making up a total of a little over 12 gallons for each individual daily. In the poorer districts of the city of London, the amount used is stated to be only about 5 gallons daily. A shower-bath will require about 4 gallons extra, and a plunge-bath from 40 to 60 gallons. Where water-closets are used in additional quantity of from 4 to 6 gallons daily for each person must be provided.

  In general this is actually one of the more interesting paragraphs that I found in this book. It describes several things that I believe could be rather unique. First it discusses the quantity of water needed for human consumption. It describes experiments done in England and considering that this book was published sometime around the turn-of-the-century around 1916 by my estimates, this would seem to indicate a human water consumption estimates of 2 to 4 pints presented 20 years before the FDA guidelines written by a bureaucrat that suggested that people should drink 8 cups of water a day.

  Furthermore I find this one interesting from the perspective that it discusses how much water people may have used around the turn-of-the-century. I live in the Southeast of the United States and today we are in a drought.. Water consumption is definitely an important issue for the Southeast United States and many other areas of the world. And therefore when I listen to and read some of the items here that describe how much water should be used or could be used, it seems strikingly different than what we might use today, especially as we have many more appliances that use water, and many newer appliances that are designed to be energy-efficient.  Very very interesting section, some of those water estimates seemed very high by todays standards and some seemed relatively low, at dollhouses levels.