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

History of the Book of Medicine

May 1st, 2008 at 5:40 pm

Health

Health.-Disease can be prevented by the individual doing everything in his power to keep in the best physical condition.  Disease is a common enemy of all of us, waiting to destroy, but nature is in league with us if we obey her laws.  With a normal body and pureblood should the invader arrived, the fight is on our side.  But once the body is weakened by heredity as a result of our parent's or forefather's neglect of the body, through the abuse of alcohol, tobacco or immoral living, lack of exercise, over eating and loss of sleep, overworked or lack of work or improper food, then will the soil be fertile for the planting of the germs of disease.  When exposed and once planted the flight will be in their favor, as the rundown body will not have sufficient vitality to overcome the invader and sickness and death will result.

Its an interesting perspective that the author offers up about the abuse of alcohol and its impact on babies.  This is something that is well documented today with fetal alcohol syndrome, but somewhat remarkable that they made the link 100 years ago.

Its remarkable, but it might also point to the direction of science and how unsubstantiated beliefs of 100 years ago, pushed the logical research in one direction or another.  Hypothesis followed by experiment to result in a proven rule or dismissal or refinement of the hypothesis.  But it requires that first notion and direction to research.  Similar things can be seen in the evolution of other areas of science from airplanes to vacuum cleaners and Ladybug steam cleaners.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

  • Ventricles of the Heart

    Ventricles of the Heart. — the walls of the left ventricle, which propels the blood to the remotest corners of the human frame, are correspondingly thicker and stronger than those of the right, which forces the blood to the lungs only. Arising from the right ventricle is seeing the blue pulmonary artery, conveying its foul, poisonous, vitiated and venous stream to the lungs, well from the left ventricle is observed a large main artery of the circulatory system — the aorta — from the arch of which arise the right and left carotid arteries.

    __________
    So in the section they jump back into describing parts of the heart as foul and poisonous? There definitely seems to be a lack of knowledge or understanding of what’s going on here, I’m no medical professional bottom of aspirin in about five minutes when the world people might have thought that the ventricles of a heart deliver poisonous blood to the lungs? Seems absurd.

    And was an aside, our blog is currently funded in part through blog advertising. You may notice is from time to time, we work with an excellent firm that provides us with ad placements throughout our blog. These ad placements are very unobtrusive and help keep us working to delve further into an understanding of medicine as it was taught a hundred years ago and as our culture looks at medicine today.

  • Cerebrum and Cerebellum

    I’m starting to get caught up on my study of the book of medicine now. Today I’m covering a larger section on the cerebrum and cerebellum and tomorrow I’ll be covering the olfactory nerve in the tongue.

    Cerebrum and Cerebellum - We observed that the cerebrum, the seat of mind and volition, is much larger than the cerebellum or little brain; a biz though that was not enough area for the evolution of the mind, we see this part of the brain most curiously wrinkled and folded into various sized convolutions, thus increasing the mental service. The more numerous these convolutions are, the higher and more noble and mental faculties and intellectual powers become. The hemisphere of the brain, here shown, is seen to be divided into three lobes, the frontal, middle and posterior. The Corpus Callosum, or the great commissioner of the brain, is most faithfully represented, and immediately below is seen the Fornix. The peculiar appearance of the cerebellum or little brain presents a tree-like resemblance, once it is called arbor vitae, or the tree of life.

    This section has several interesting segment Senate that stood out to me as I read them. Plus it had a third that stood out to my wife. My wife wondered if the word convolutions meant the same thing as convulsions. “Is that even a word? Are they spelled the same she asked?”

    They are both words and both different words at that. For entertainment purposes I will provide you with my assumed definition even though I could be wrong. Maybe someone will take the light 90 years from now in interpreting my definition or perceived definition of these words.

    To me a convolutions is something that represents a folding or a complex structure such as the folds of the brain.

    Where as, in a a convulsion is a physical act as someone made a fall into when they are suffering from epilepsy or choking or some act of involuntary muscle control.

    I also found it somewhat entertaining to hear the author describes a noble mental faculties and references to the higher brain. This book was written before World War I and World War II where was publicly documented and historically written down for the record that the human brain has the capability to perform things that are far less than noble and definitely not intrinsic to our own thought processes. I suspect there’s also certain nonsecular references to the concept that a person is of a higher level of importance in the grand scheme of things. The connotations of this verbiage have much potential but its true intent is probably only something that we will build a speculate on going even further into the future.

  • Pulmonary Veins

    Pulmonary Veins. – From this net-work of arteries and air sells the radicals of the pulmonary veins arise, and, coalescing into larger and larger branches, at length accompany the arteries and return the blood to the left auricle of the heart in a purified condition. The pulmonary arteries and veins differ from the same vessels in the other parts of the body, since the former conveys the innocent blood, and the latter arterial blood.

    _____________________
    I stopped on this short paragraph as I approach some larger sections. This segment again makes a reference to the word “net-work” in a style that is now out dated. The next section takes us into Breathing and then lung capacity.

 

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