Various uses of the hand.  -- with the hand we affirm or reject the proposition with more force than with the tongue.  It is the first to greet, and the last to bid our friends goodbye.  We use it to express our joy and pleasure, or to give vent to our fear and horror.  In the hour of peril we employ it in powerful supplication to Him to whom we look for succor and help, and it adds force and power to the appeals of suffering, of sorrow and of woe.  It bestows its loving caresses on the Downey cheek of the baby, invokes the blessings of Heaven, pleads for mercy, or hurls curses on our enemies. Indeed, we do not always seem to realize how many notes in the tune of human life a hand of man is made to play.  Its beauties, it's perfect at its ability, it varied endowments, and the different uses to which it is applied, are almost beyond our thoughts, and he was deprived of this useful member sustained a loss that none can estimate, nor the wealth of Croesus compensate.

The Croesus reference relates to a very rich king that lived around the 500 BC period in what is today modern day Turkey.  The reference of course is one that indicates that some things when lost can not be made up for with money at any level.  You can repair some injuries, you can even compensate for others such as a drug addiction by attending drug rehabs.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• Difficulty of Obviating Lead Poisoning
  
  

  Difficulty of Obviating Lead Poisoning. — attempts have been made to obviate the danger of water contamination from lead pipes in various ways, but not as yet with complete success. In some instances the pipes have been lined with other metals, such as tin or zinc; but, at least in some instances, a galvanic action has thus been set up, which corroded the conduits with great rapidity, and probably lead, therefore, still more dangerous pollution of the water supply. Coating the pipes on the inside with coal tar, bituminous varnish, solution of gutta-percha and the India rubber, have also been experimented with, as yet with but partial success.

  Well those prescriptions sound about as useful as most prescriptions for acne treatments today.  Again, I would remind everyone that the quote above is from a 100 year old medical book and the preventative steps offered really only offer historical perspective. 

• How We Walk
  
  

  How We Walk.- the foot is in raised from the ground and swung forward into true pendulum fashion.  The leg in so doing becomes flexed at the knee joint, and considerably shorter, and the whole weight of the body is transferred to and supported by the leg and foot, which is planted firmly on the ground.  The leg in the foot which was swinging in the air is now brought down to the ground, the muscles passing through changes just the reverse of those employed in raising it.  Planting this foot firmly on the ground, to prevent the body from failing, we raise the other foot, swing it forward, like describing the same movements as before, repeating the process alternatively with each leg.  These movements constitute the act of walking; the complexity of which is fully illustrated by the consultative machinery employed for its performance, as we’ve seen in the beautiful place join the wonderful unskillful arrangements of the bones and muscles of the leg.

  This description sounds slightly unscientific.  I picture a man standing there and slowly lifting his leg while the author slowly writes in perfect form each word describing the movement, but the entire time failing to recognize the chaotic nature of walking or running which is at best an exercise in repeated controlled falling.  Its much easier today to analyze true movement with the benefit of cameras and slow motion.  The author might not even be suited for practicing medicine today and could possibly be better suited to accounting or banking working with mortgage lenders.

• Infectious Diseases from Impure Water
  
  

  Infectious Diseases from Impure Water. — the principal acute diseases which are due to impure water are cholera, typhoid fever, diarrhea and dysentery; and, although it is only within a comparatively recent. That mankind has begun to realize it’s dangerous from the source of these maladies, the accumulated evidence is already very conclusive.

  It is somewhat ironic, that 100 years ago water impurity was a serious issue.  The irony today is two fold.  The types of water impurities that many people around the world faced is no different than the water impurity challenges faced by many developing countries today.  However, instead of wiping out water impurities, we have complicated water impurity issues by contaminating water supplies and water tables with both chemicals from manufacturing processes as well as drugs from antibiotics to viagra that have been flushed away at levels that now present trace levels consumed from people and cattle alike.  Instead of improving our situation on Earth, we have made it more complex and possibly more contaminated. We don’t have the option to reset our water system memory and start all over again, and so we continue to struggle with a system that is gradually getting more dangerous for all of us.