The Knee-Pan.-The patella toward me pan is seen held firmly in position, giving greater strength and security to this important joint.  Around the ankle is observe the annular ligament, finding the long silvery thongs or tendons of the muscles of the legs, thus preventing their displacement.  It also towards security and string to the ankle joint, but not interfering with its elasticity in motion.  The foot shows us the natural position in shape in which the toes should be when encased in a boot or shoe.

This section relatively speaking does a decent job of sticking to the facts and avoids excessive and irrelevant language like I avoid beer pong tables.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• Quantity and Variety of Foods
  
  

  Quantity and Variety of Foods.  — as we have already seen, the human body consists of numerous mechanics or artisans, who are constantly at work repairing and upbuilding the unceasing destruction that is continually going on.  If fresh food be not daily supplied, this work would soon cease, and the lamp of life flicker out.  To replace this constant waste we required nearly 3 pounds of solid food, and fully 3 pounds of liquid food for our daily allowance.  But to convert the pent-up energies of bread, meat and vegetables into the tissues of our own mechanism require a number of differently constructed organs, and these we now desire to draw your attention to this beautiful chart.  The organs consist of the stomach, liver, pancreas and intestines, which comprise the principal organs concerned in the process of digestion.

  – — – — – —

  In 2007 I can hardly imagine what eating 3 pounds of food a day might be like, and I tend to eat a lot having a very high metabolism.  For example I had two waffles for breakfast, two products on hot dog buns for supper and to bananas today.  I think the total of all that food combined may have been a pound for pound and a half if you don’t count the banana peels.  To put it differently, I can’t quite imagine eating six half pound cheeseburgers every day.  Not to mention the half pound cheeseburgers that you get a fast food place like Wendy’s, are weighed before they’re cooked and not after.  So a half pound cheeseburgers going to weigh less when you eat it because they took out some of the crease and fat, but probably not enough.

  Drinking 3 pounds of liquid definitely caught my attention.  There have been many references over the years to the US nutritional food pyramid.  By many accounts the pyramid has been traced to some Washington, DC bureaucrat that came up with a concept that a person needs to drink eight glasses of water every day.  To my knowledge, no one has come up with any scientific basis for why that Washington bureaucrat would chose an eight glasses as opposed to five or 10, or even just stating that a person should drink as often as they are thirsty.  Now I’m curious to learn if 3 pounds of water equates to approximately 8 glasses of water.  This book was published in 1916 and the food pyramid was was written up in the 1930s approximately 14 years later.

  Is it possible that I found an early reference in this medical textbook that may have been the basis for that quackery prescribing eight glasses of water every day?

  It definitely could be possible as this to tomb of a book was definitely reference material that I could envision a bureaucrat pulling off a shelf of the Library of Congress, what better book than the Library of Health to be found in the Library of Congress.  I don’t expect ultimately be accredited with finding the source for that quackery anymore than you or I expect to find a publisher’s clearing House letter in our Mailboxes containing an actual check for $1 million.

• The common fly (Musca domestica)
  
  

  The common fly (Musca domestica).- the only way to prevent the flight curing diseases to destroy history in place, keep them out of the home, etc., when developed, by screens and swat or catch by flypaper, etc., everyone seen in a room.

  Houseflies are a danger to human life.  Airborne filth, feed upon garbage, sewage waste matter of all kinds.  They carry germs on the pro-business of their bodies, and a single flaw is known to have carried as many as 350,000 germs and given them off into the liquid food in which it was floating.  They also carry numerous germs inside their bodies which they convey to food, etc., and their vomit and all matter.

  Flies can carry disease germs of typhoid fever, consumption, diarrhea, dysentery and other diseases from a sufferer to you.  They come in contact with your food, milk, water, etc., you’re sleeping child, or a light on an open wound, direct from the garbage can, because the door, this bit industry, etc., from decaying animal and vegetable matter and from the sick room.  Thus every individual should do everything possible to aid the physician, city and state and destroy these known carriers of filth and disease and thereby prevent sickness, due to carelessness and indifference by permitting flies to breathe and live.

  If you consider the tone of this particular section, you would think that the housefly was the Swiss Army knife of disease carriers in the Western world.  In fact today we understand their purpose and the world a little bit better, but that doesn’t mean that they should be entirely permitted to run amok.  Typically the presence as a result of some other item that has started to decay in the area and attracted flies.  The presence of this item sometimes can be more dangerous than the flight itself, but the fly can definitely spread that around once the process is started.  In their defense there are some practical uses for utilizing flies or even sterile I’ll maggots to help clean items from time to time.

• What the Lungs Are
  
  

  THE LUNGS; THEIR MECHANISM AND WONDERS.
  
  What the Lungs Are.– The lungs!dense looking objects, and yet how li buoyant! This beautiful anatomical chart shows us a front view of the chest and lungs, with the lungs enclosed within the bony basket — work of the chest. The lungs are two large, conical bodies, placed one on each side of the chest, and occupy the greater part of its cavity. During the life they accurately adapt themselves to the varying dimensions of the chest; for, unhappily, the foibles of fashion very frequently cause restriction of the lungs, by interfering with the resistance and freedom of movement of the ribs, so essential to health, by tight lacing and the bar Paris usage of corsets.

  _____________________
  This is a distinct historical reference as we go to the section on the lungs. Corsets aren’t in use very often today in 2007, and when they are used they used with materials that don’t actually bind up the chest typically. They’re definitely not in wide use and reading about this in a medical book almost reminds me of reading about foot binding in a history book about Chinese fashion. This is a Western medical book and so corsets are probably closer to this book than Chinese foot binding might be, however to me looking at the book almost 100 years later, the concept still seems very alien.

  The first couple sentences of this section are also fairly peculiar for the writing styles, with the excessive use of the “!” And the joy and wonder at looking at something so beautiful as the lungs today seems a little insincere, however it may have had very pure sincere reasons when it was written a hundred years ago, the great war and in World War II and its successor along with many scandals have cause the world to grow up a bit and harden itself and I wonder if in part this almost innocent use of language seems slightly alien itself due to the distance of almost 100 years of innocence.