Intercostal Arteries.--the intercostal arteries and veins are beautifully illustrated in the chart. The veins return the blood to the heart. The large ascending and descending venae cavae are seen in this illustration.
Meaning of artery.--from the fact that death arteries are empty, the ancients believed in to contain air, whence their name, derived from aer, air, and terco, I keep, which literally means, air ducts.
The Spleen.-- the spleen is a spongy organ, of a living color, oval in figure and situated in the left upper part of the abdomen and immediately behind the stomach. It's weight very from four to 10 ounces. It is largely composed of cells, but it's function is little understood, though from its position is believed to be in some way useful to the stomach during the process of digestion.
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We are moving rapidfire through the section and were just about ready to come up on the next section of charts, chart 3. Shortly after chart 3 we will then hit two of the book of medicine and we will move into anatomy and physiology.
So sit back, if you've got any questions stop by our reception desks and ask her receptionist in the meantime enjoy our translation of the book of medicine.
As to the known purpose of the spleen today (according to Ask Yahoo! the definitive answer on everything and nothing at all)
- filtering out foreign organisms that infect your blood
- removing your old or damaged platelets and red blood cells
- storing extra blood and releasing it as needed
- forming some types of white blood cells
Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:
- THE EAR AND IT’S WONDERS – The External Ear
THE EAR AND IT’S WONDERS.
The External Ear. – the organ of hearing consists of three parts: the external ear, the middle ear or tympanum, and the internal ear or a labyrinth. The external part of the air represented in the colored engraving is very realistic of that essential appendage to this important special organ of sense and man. It consists of an expanded sheet of cartilage, folded and true trumpet fashion, for collecting the sound waves in conveying them to the external meatus or mouth of the auditory canal.
It probably took me about 4 tries to get my voice recognition program to pick up on the word tympanum and get it spelled correctly! That software has been one of my best buys ever, but it still makes mistakes on weird words from time to time.
- The Stomach
The Stomach. — the stomach is an irregular expansion of the gullit or aesophagus, and is the receptacle which receives the food when swallowed. Its shape has been, not inaptly, likened to the Scotch bagpipe. It will hold about 3 pints, though it is capable of considerable distension. When moderately filled with food it measures about 12 inches in length by 4 inches in diameter at its widest end. The walls of the stomach consist of four distinct coats, held together by fine areolar tissue, and are arranged in the following order, from within out word: the mucous, the areolar, the muscular and the serous. The inner mucous coat is a smooth, soft, rather thick, pulpy membrane, loosely connected with the muscular coat, and secretes the gastric digestive fluid of the stomach.
_______The spelling in the section definitely gave me a few runaround’s. The spelling of areolar and mucous and a esophagus oral spells slightly differently than they are today most of the time. Either that or my medical contexts is extremely off base which is also possible, but I do think esophagus had a more antique like spelling as the ‘a’ and the ‘e’ were actually run together in the print as if they were one letter. I’ve seen this printing technique before but I don’t exactly understand where or why it’s used other than for words like esophagus and even Egypt, it’s almost to signify that a hard he will follow at the beginning a word that starts with the as opposed to an egg which is not pronounced ‘eeegg’ and instead ‘ehhgg’.
It’s not a real big thing, but it’s something that struck me as I was going through that section. I’m sure somewhere in the world that spelling is perfectly normal. New thing that caught my eye was the analogy of a Scottish bagpipe being similar to a stomach. I’m not going to look it up as it’s a fact that I don’t really want to know I’d rather live with the mystery of it, but I suspect the bagpipes are made or lease were made from sheep stomachs or something like that anyway. I could be completely wrong but like I said in this particular case it likely that mystery out there to savor for the rest of my days. It almost picture myself taken a cross-country trip someday on a motorcycle, getting off my bike at the end of a long day of writing and walking into a café to order some food sitting down at the counter and removing my motorcycle sunglasses.
I’ll engage in some benign conversation with a local and will start stock about Scottish bagpipes. My dinner guest to be the expert in Scottish bagpipes and I won’t know anything about them. At that point in time I can finally end the mystery and I’ll ask my dinner guest if Scottish bagpipes are actually made from sheep stomach’s. I’ll probably get a ludicrous look, maybe a guffaw, and possibly a black eye. That’s the type of thing makes life fun!
- Wonders of the Spiral Plate
Wonders of the Spiral Plate.-if this curious and artistic spiral play, which is seen to wine 2 ½ times around, could be enrolled and made to stand in an upright position, you would make a beautiful microscopic heart, that of a thousand strings, but of 3000 strings, and if it were possible to strike these delicate infinitesimal chords as we can the keyboard of an organ or piano, every conceivable variety of tone that the ear can distinguish would be produced and conveyed to the brain is the product of sound.
Well if you have been following this series on the ear with me, you are probably as happy as I am that the author is no longer talking about arches in the ear. maybe they ended up finding one of those Freudian drug rehab programs after all!