The blood, anatomically, physiologically, & pathologically considered, with a view to exemplify or set forth, by instance or example, the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, as revealed and declared in holy writ / by Charles Edward Joseph.

  • Joseph Charles Edward.
Date:
[1846]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The blood, anatomically, physiologically, & pathologically considered, with a view to exemplify or set forth, by instance or example, the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, as revealed and declared in holy writ / by Charles Edward Joseph. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    cumstances than any other animal God has created. He can live among the perpetual snows of the Poles, or under the burn- ing heat of the Equator The same being who has passed his youth amid luxuries and ease, the sun scarcely suffered to shine upon his fair check, may in after life tread the dry, pathless desert, subsist on a pittance of food, and a bare sufficiency of water, and still survive the privation. Daily do I see man placed in the most opposite positions; the artizan pent up in his confined room, reeking with noxious vapours; and the tiller of the soil, braving with brawny limbs almost uncovered, alike the summer's sun and the winter wind, the heavy spring showers and the driving sleet; yet they both live and have a numerous progeny, although perhaps he whose destiny is fashioned by the artificial wants of human society, fares worse and lives shorter than he who gives his frame to the mercy of nature's fiercest strife. Thus not only can man exist in the greatest extremes of temperature, but also upon substances most numerous in name, varied in appearance, and different in composition. Hence, to reduce these aliments to a state fit for the necessary repair of his body, he must have organs more per- fect and complex than most other animals. It is not necessary or fitting here to describe the process of digestion. All matters conveyed into the stomach that are in any degree reducible, are converted by its acid secretions into a homogeneous mass termed chyme. This mass is carried onwards as it is formed, through the pyloric orifice of the stomach, into the duodenum, there to be acted upon by the secretion of the liver, bile, which becomes intimately mixed with it, evidently with the design of separating the nutritious parts from the useless, for the most part of the constituents of the bile pass off with the latter, From the duo- denum these now more elaborated matters pass into the remain- ing intestines, on the surface of which ramify extensively nume- rous vessels for the purpose of absorbing the nutrient portion, which is now called chyle. This fluid is carried by these lacteals to the mesenteric glands, and thence to the thoracic duct.—