Reviewing the Medical Books and Journals that constituted Medical understanding a century back.

History of the Book of Medicine

August 23rd, 2007 at 1:52 pm

THE CLITORIS, URETHRA, VAGINA AND HYMEN.

These female organs show further at the perfection which anatomical plate printing has attained.

Clitoris.—This small organ, it will be seen, is situated at the upper part of the Volvo, or outside parts of the female generative system, it is usually concealed by the lips of the pudenda. It performs a function during sexual intercourse similar to that performed by the penis of the male.

Urethra.--This highly useful organ, common to both sexes, is, as will be seen by the plate, now, or medium, by means of which the urine is carried from the bladder to be voided. It is a delicately lined organ, furnished with retentive valves, and therefore susceptible to a variety of diseases.

Vagina.--This word implies a chief, and is applied to the can out which leads from the uterus (womb) to the external organs of generation in the female sex. Commonly, it implies such external organs, or organ, as depicted in the plate.

Hymen.--The mucous membrane, or virginal membrane, at the entrance of the female sexual organ, or vagina.

In general the author skips through the section very rapidly in a no-nonsense business or away. There is no alliteration, and no religious references. That is not surprising as this was written just after the turn of the century when discussions of these particular topics are not carried out in public and rarely between men and women in public, let alone in a book designed to teach both men and women. Keep in mind, that this book came out 40 to 50 years before the Kinsey studies and books on sexual practices were done and written about. Medicine and Society at a long way to go from this point in time when this section was written.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

  • How is Malaria carried by the Mosquito

    How is malaria carried by the mosquito?-best imagined that a man has returned from some malarial country takes up his abode in a healthy, yet mosquito infested village.  This man may be fairly over his attack yet he still suffers from an occasional chill with fever.  He has no screens in his house, nor have his neighbors, unless previously told to follow such cautions.  A female as Cato are several attack in and stuck his blood which contains these tiny parasites.  The mosquito takes millions of the little parasites which then undergo a development in the body of the insect and can be seen microscopically in the stomach and intestine, and the small glands in its mouth, which secrete saliva.  Now let us follow the mosquito and see what harm it can cause any community.  It flies through a screen door or window and lights on the arm, etc., of an unsuspecting neighbor.  Inviting a person the mosquito ejects or gives off its saliva into the womb to eight in diluting the blood of a person which it has been, as the blood is too thick to be sucked up to the tiny tube in the bill (proboscis) of the mosquito.  In this way the bite of the female mosquito whose body contains a small animal error sites which cause malaria, as by means of the saliva into the blood of the person during the act of sucking up the blood.  Does the mosquito sucks up the blood of the individual and in exchange injects into his blood the saliva contains parasites.  These parasites multiply in the blood of the person bitten and produce poisons which give rise to the chills, fever, aching limbs, etc., known as malaria, malarial fever or “odd,” (chills and fever).  It can readily be seen how malaria will spread when individuals in the community have millions of parasites in the blood, and at the same time as Cato’s are carrying around in their bodies, millions of the same living germs which they sought from the blood of the infected person, develop and inject them into the blood of every person they bite.

    You will notice as you read the follow on sections covering Mosquitos and Malaria that the book is big on talking about where they live, but not terribly practical on how to actually deal with the insects.  There are more references to different possible breeding places than there are gears in a Patek Gondolo watch.

  • Coagulation of the Blood

    Coagulation of the Blood. –according to Dr. Draper, of New York, 20,000,000 die at a single breath! Blood when exposed to the air coagulates, and the value of this peculiar yet intrinsic property cannot be overestimated. Win and archery is ruptured bleeding takes place, the blood coagulates and forms a plug, thus preventing further hemorrhage.thus we observe with what divine foresight and wisdom, not only the wants of the body are provided for, but also the incidents to which it is liable.

    At the beginning of this topic I started to assume that the author was referring to the death of blood cells in the number of 20 million as opposed to people or something else. Even the book with a section heading it sounds a little sensational. The description of coagulation wasn’t too bad and it made sense and then the author seemed to lose his scientific perspective again and started talking about the divine and basically spouting some relative nonsense which again makes me do believe that the author had reached the extent of his knowledge. I think he was just basically filling in the text with more words. If I didn’t know better I would suspect the author was being paid by the word and basically was just paid three times over what that information was worth.

    Actually, come to think of it, I do not know better. I have done some external research to attempt to identify the bonafides of the author and the editors, but have so far come up short in that department. I couldn’t verify their credentials as medical professionals any more than I could say that they were masons that specialized in the construction of outdoor fireplace settings.

  • Diseases Caused by Alkaline Waters

    Diseases Caused by Alkaline Waters. — the symptoms referral to an excess of alkalinity, rising from the presence of these earthy salts in a drinking water, and mainly those of a dyspeptic nature. At first the employment of hard water by persons who are unaccustomed to it produces diarrhea. Which is occasionally serious or even dangerous in its character. But the long continued use of such a drinking fluid is thought to cause habitual constipation, with the heavy training of evils, including piles and liver complaint, which depend upon it. Calculus, or stone in the kidney or in the bladder, which gives rise sometimes to the most horrible agony human beings are ever called upon to endure, is believed to be due, in many instances, to an excess of lime and magnesia salts in the drinking water.

    This section is definitely interesting. And as I read this section, I distinctly heavy memory of watching an old Clint Eastwood movie. Clint Eastwood’s trek across the desert somewhere in the southwest of the United States, and of course the bad guys are chasing him. Clint Eastwood is smart enough to recognize that the water in one pool that he comes to has an alkalinity level far too high to drink. He has a sidekick, who initially attempt to drink the water but Clint Eastwood stops him knowing better. Then the bad guys come by sometime later and drink the water and one of them croak’s. This particular section highlights the fact that you may not die instantly from drinking this water but it can definitely make you very ill in the short-term afterwords, or very ill in a chronic way if you consume this type of water over a long period of time. Plus I’m sure that there is some water that is poisonous right from go. 

    This section also reminds me of a water purification straw that was handed out at a trade show that I attended a few years back. The water purification straw was handed out like personalized pens are handed out at most trade shows, but this was a bit of a outdoorsman tradeshow focusing on hunting tools and guns and stuff like that. I’m under the impression that water purification straw’s or tablets even only work to essentially remove microbes are things that might trigger Montezuma’s revenge, but now I have to wonder if maybe they had the ability to cancel out our alkalinity and balance the pH a bit.

 

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