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:

• The Intestines
  
  

  The Intestines.  — the next chart shows us the manner in which the intestines are arranged in the abdominal cavity.  The entire intestinal can now is about 30 feet in length, and is divided into two portions — the small intestines, and the large intestines; these again are each subdivided into three different portions.  Of the large intestines, the transfers portion is laid open, showing the internal arrangements.  A section of the bladder is even on this chart.

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  I really don’t have any clue what they’re talking about when they refer to the three portions subdividing both the large and small intestines.  Is nothing in the chart that mentions this subdivision and I’ve never heard of anything like that before in regards to the intestines.  This could be my lame and ignorance or it could be some odd notion espoused in this book.  They also mention that the link to the intestines is approximately 30 feet.  I seem to recall from my grade school education 25 years ago, that the length was 26 feet for the small intestine and six to 7 feet for the large intestine or was that 3 feet for the large intestine?

  My fourth-grade education combined with my loss of memory over 25 years may be getting the best of me.  Maybe I spent too much time at the drive-in watching movies freezing my toes off as I laid on top of the roof of our van, clinging to a van rack.  I’m sure that would seem extremely strange to the writers of this book and possibly even to my readers is not been to a drive-in before during the fall.

• Man the Most Complex Body
  
  

  Man the Most Complex Body.– it embodies in the epitome of the whole universe!  Man is more elaborate, more complex, more God-like, than any other living organism; more wonderful, more beautiful, more marvelous, that any work of human ingenuity, conception or construction.
  Indeed, the mechanism, the skill and the workmanship displayed in the human body is simply perfection itself.  In conception, it is divine; and design, perfect; in architecture, grand; in construction, wonderful; and beauty, lovely; inform, symmetrical; an outline, sublime; in strength, great; and arrangements, marvelous; and mobility, transcendent; and adaptability, unexcelled; in fine, when studied in all its parts and their relationship to each other, we are led to exclaim with the Psalmist David, that the human body is “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

  This paragraph was excruciatingly interesting for its use of commas and semicolons.  I’m using a dictation device to record this and I thought I was going to go nuts with the alterations from commas to semicolons and back again!
  This particular section precedes and follows chart to which provides a diagram of the human torso absent skin, it’s a flip open picture that provides a great deal of detail of the internal organs of the human torso.  Part of me wonders if all of this exceptional description and praise of the beauty of the human body is used in part to show the purest intent of the author does not be sacrilegious or possibly vulgar and providing pictures of human body.  I see this in part because last I was watching CNN and date pretrade apportion a segment on a doctor in Egypt.  This particular doctor is a woman and she is a sexologist and a Muslim and the first-ever talkshow host on Muslim television that talks about sex.  She is sometimes labeled the Dr. Ruth of the Islamic world.
  As I was reading the section I was thinking of that CNN segment with her and wondering if she had to utilize similar praises and religious associations so as to not to offend her audience anymore than she already is just by the act of what she’s doing and the perception of the taboo and possibly stigmas that are associated with what she is doing.
  In addition this paragraph also had a religious reference which I have no idea what it means, and frankly this evening I don’t have the gear acid you to figure it out I’m sure there will be many more to explore later on in the book.

• The Pancreas, or "Sweetbread"
  
  

  The Pancreas, or “Sweetbread.”  — The pancreas, or “sweetbread,” is a single glandular organ, situated transversely across the upper and back part of the abdomen, on a level with the last dorsal spine bone.  It is of an irregular, elongated form, from six to 8 inches in length, an inch and a half in breadth, and from a half to 1 inch in thickness.  It secretes about 7 ounces daily of a slightly alkaline fluid containing the organic principle — pancreatin, which is the property of changing the starchy food into sugar.  Whilst it has this power, yet its chief work in the digestive process seems to be the breaking up of the fat globules into myriad of my new particles which mix freely with water, and thereby promote their absorption by the lacteals.

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  This section definitely exhibits a lack of understanding of the workings of the pancreas.  It’s not too far off and its description and characteristic described within it are not too far off.  You can can understand where they were going with their logic based on what they were observing.  I suppose if someone were to cut open some golf balls, they might as them that the plastic white shell is there to protect the rubber bands inside from the bludgeon of the golf club.  That’s not incorrect but it’s not exactly the purpose either.