Cause for Bright's Disease. -- it has long seemed probable that the increasing prevalence of that terribly fatal malady, "Bright's disease," especially in cities and large towns, maybe due to the poisonous effects of exceeding minute quantities of lead, dissolved from the lead pipes so generally employed as service conduits, notwithstanding the protective coating, which usually forms so promptly upon them.
In the year 2008, this paragraph would seem like something rather obvious. But it is remarkable to look back in time and see how people consider the potential for this problem to exist, before science had proven it out. We sometimes forget that our knowledge is built on many many different precursors and actions that were taken before we came to be. Humanity learns its lessons from the people that come before it and the actions that they take. Sometimes they learn those lessons quickly, and sometimes they learned those lessons very slowly, whether they are trying to understand lead poisoning or come up with better egg nog recipes. This is one of the reasons why history is so important for us to study, not only do we get to learn some of the items from the past to avoid making the same mistakes, we get to learn how people in the past recognize the problem and dealt with it so that we can recognize and deal with new problems today.
Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:
- Heart a Double Organ
Heart a Double Organ. –On looking at the heart one would think it was a single, solid organ. It is not, however, but a double organ, divided into four compartment; the two upper ones, and they’re supposed resemblance to a dog’s ear, are called auricles, and the lower ones, from resembling a little stomach, are called ventricles. The auricle and ventricle on each side communicate with one another, but the right and left halves of the heart are each separate and distinct organs, and perform different functions — the right side propels the dark, vitiated and impure blood, whilst the left deals with the bright crimson, life — giving and life — sustaining blood.
I found it odd that the author referred to the left and right sections of the heart communicating with each other. They do work in tandem or synchronized together, but I have to wonder if the author believes as opposed to knowing in a scientific way that he heart has some sort of cognitive power to actually communicate between sections of the heart. Or possibly the author had some sort of mechanical perspective and looked at the heart like to sprocket’s connected together communicating as the teeth of the sprocket of the left side connected with teeth of the sprocket of the right side transferring information from one to the next like a Turing machine.
As I think about some of the odd things in this book, I even experienced the idle thought that maybe the author or editors might have been dipping into their own medicine like Sigmund Freud a little too much. I have no idea how much drug abuse by physicians may have occurred one hundred years ago, but the diversion from fact into what might be described as fluffy filler, could possibly be explained by the presence of a drug addiction. Addicts were prevalent 100 years ago even thought here were no drug rehabs. If people go help at all for their addictions, it might include a trip to a sanitorium or an alms house, but chances are this is all just speculation and incorrect in the assumption.
- Boiled Water
water boiling in a glass bowl, common now, but not then like HDMI splitter’s today. slightly new and archaic at the same time… Boiled Water.-The insipid taste of water which has been boiled is due to the absence of air. Many gases besides air may be artificially or naturally mingled with water, and some, like ammonia or nitric acid, are freely soluble in it. In sea-water, the presence of common salt, with small quantities of sulphate of soda or Glauber’s salt, and, of the compound of magnesia and chlorine, called chloride of magnesium, render it entirely unfit for drinking, as many a hapless shipwrecked sailor has found to his cost.
- The Eardrum
The Eardrum.-on the back of this flap is seeing a strikingly natural representation of the middle ear, the tympanum or drum, as it is frequently called. For the bottom of the tympanum is observed the Eustachian tube, through which is conveyed air from the pharynx to the middle ear. Across this chamber is seen stretched three very tiny, Cingular phones, which, from their shape, or called a hammer, the ample and the states. These delicate bones are connected together, one by ball and socket joint, the other by a hinge joint and by ligaments, and are moved by small muscles; they serve to convey the wave sounds across the tympanum cavity to the internal a year.
There is that crazy word again, tympanum. In architecture, I believe that refers to an arch or an arch system. I have a feeling the author looked it up and couldn’t stop using it, like some desperately needing addiction treatment repeats a phrase over and over again without any rhyme nor reason.
