Part 5 (2/2)
Our lungs are surely the half-way place between life and death. We are told by chemistry that two gases make water for the uses of the body. Is it not true that nature makes water in great quant.i.ties often for special cases or conditions, for relief purposes, such as in asiatic cholera, cholera morbus, chills and fever; when the contents of stomach, bowels and skin run off many gallons of water, running through sheet and mattress and on floor, not from kidneys but skin. Is it not plain to the man of reason that the two gases, oxygen and hydrogen, do unite in the lungs, form water and give supply to this great river of water that washes life out in but a few hours in cases of cholera and other diseases. The person is very cold at such times, breath and lung far below the normal, and fully enough to condense gases to water.
THE LAW OF FIVES.
Lungs have five lobes, three on right lung, and two on left. Liver has five lobes, three on right lobe, and two on left lobe. Nerves have five qualities, nutrition, sensation, motion, voluntary and involuntary.
Nerves have five senses, seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting.
Since all principles differ in qualities or kinds of service, would it be amiss for us to inquire a little farther why the lungs and liver are provided with five divisions each, if not to do five kinds of work, and different from all other kinds in many ways?
FEEBLE ACTION OF HEART.
I want to draw your attention to the facts that there is no method known by which electricity or magnetic forces can be weighed. When we find the nerves that connect the heart and lungs to brain limited by pressure from twist or slip of neck, do we not see cause for croup? How would we reason to convey electricity without a connected wire? Not at all, we would know no electric force could reach to any point unless a continued connection was made. Now to the point; suppose the vagus nerve should be oppressed to a condition to cut off part of the electricity, would we be surprised if the heart should be feeble in action. I think much of the diseases of the ”_heart_” are not of the organ but from a feeble supply of electricity that is cut off in medulla or heart nerves, between heart and brain. Why singing and roaring of ears in heart diseases, if there is no waste of pectoral electricity?
THE HEART.
With the knife of reason in hand and the microscope of mind of the greatest known power properly adjusted, we cut and lay open the breast of man. Here we dwell indefinitely. This is the engine of life, the self-propelling machine which has constructed all that is necessary to its own convenience and comfort. It has brought and deposited its own nourishment in the coronary arteries, whose duty is to construct and enlarge the heart from time to time as its demands increase. We see its main trunk of supply placed lengthways with the spinal column for the purpose of constructing a manufactory of nutriment. We pa.s.s from the heart upward about one foot, here we find it has constructed a battery of force and sensation, and contains all power necessary to carry on construction to the completed man.
In that brain or battery is found all the motor and sensory elements of life, with nerves to transmit all nerve powers and principles found in the human body. There is not a known atom in the whole human make-up that has not been propelled by the heart through the channels by which it has provided for such purpose. Every muscle, bone, hair, and all other parts without an exception have traveled through this system of arteries to their separate destinations. All are indebted to the heart for their material size, and all qualities of motion and life sustaining principles of the human body.
If the carotid artery should tire out and not be able to perform its duty the brain would tire out also, and cease to operate. Should the descending aorta come to a halt from any cause, all parts of the body depending upon that vessel would suffer a total loss of blood supply.
Equally so with any other princ.i.p.al artery of limb or body, all mark a failure equal to the suspended supply. The parts and principles of the human body depending upon the heart are numerous beyond computation.
Every expulsive stroke of the heart throws into line armed and equipped for duty thousands and millions of operators, whose duties are to inspect, repair injuries and construct anew if need be from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. With the best eye of reason we see but dimly into the breast of man which contains the heart, the wonder of man and the secret of life.
I have given these bulky descriptions of the forest and ocean to prepare the mind of man to begin the inspection of the machinery that has constructed the body of which he is the indweller. If we cannot swallow all, we can taste.
FROM NECK TO HEART.
The hearts of all animals should call the most careful attention of the student of nature. He finds in it the first act of life; from it go all parts or by it all parts of the body are made, and the student of nature soon learns that at the heart he finds the first evidence of the power of life to continue and give useful shape to matter. Its first work is to complete itself in material form with necessary chambers to hold blood and with tubes to convey to all places of need. He sees vessels leaving the heart to form brain, lungs, liver, trunk and limbs, and with each and all he can see the nerves of motion, sensation, nutrition, the voluntary and involuntary--all working in perfect harmony and content to do their part in the economy of life. Without that union in action a confusion will show in form of abnormality which is known as disease. On its work all nerves do depend for force and strength to build and renovate the body in all its bones, muscles and nerves--thus all channels to and from the heart must be cleared from all hindrance. No nerve can do its part unless it be well nourished. If not it will fail to execute its part for want of power--for by it all blood must move.
These nerves are found in plexuses in all parts of the body; they are abundant in the skin, fascia, muscle, lymphatics and all organs great and small. The Osteopath must know or learn that no infringement can be tolerated in any part. Nature's demands are surely absolute, and require that the last farthing shall be paid in full. Now for a start--we will explore the neck; here we have the great and small occipital and the cervical group all receiving from the brain and feeding parts below.
Thus we must stop at the neck and read the lessons that can be found there, and learn them well; or we will find that we will not be able to meet diseases only to be defeated. We must have the fight during the four seasons of the year. In the cold seasons we will find lung and other diseases--croup, pneumonia, diphtheria, sore throat. All these do their mischief through the nerves of the neck.
Where is or who is the great thinker who knows and can tell all of the duties and actions of the nerves of the neck, or what nerve failed and slept while a tubercle was formed in the lungs? Which nerve slept while fat is heaped up in useless piles in the body? Let us wake up!
Consumption does not come without a cause. What plexus is overcome and allows the lungs to waste away? To what ganglion of the spine would the finger of reason point, and say, ”that is the cause of _phthisis pulmonalis_?” In our search we find a division of nerves run from the brain through the regions of the neck, and find a point at which a branch leaves a greater nerve on a line that leads to the lungs. We will likely find a ganglion at which place all or much of one or both lungs are supplied. Then we, by reason, would see that freedom of action cannot be. If some substance should intrude by pressure on any nerve in that region, we must judge by conditions if that pressure has cut off nutrition equal to feeble condition of the lungs.
DYSPEPSIA OR IMPERFECT DIGESTION.
In our physiologies we read much about digestion. We will start in where they stop. They bring us to the lungs with chyle fresh as made and placed in thoracic duct, previous to flowing into the heart to be transferred to lungs to be purified, charged with oxygen and otherwise qualified, and sent off for duty, through the arteries great and small, to the various parts of the system. But there is nothing said of the time when all blood is gas (if ever) before it is taken up by the secretions, after refinement, and driven to the lungs to be mixed with the old blood from the venous system. A few questions about the blood seem to hang around my mental crib for food. Reason says we cannot use blood before it has all pa.s.sed through the gaseous stage of refinement, which reduces all material to the lowest forms of atoms, before constructing any material body. I think it safe to a.s.sume that all muscles and bones of our body have been in the gas state while in the process of preparing substances for blood. A world of questions arise at this point.
QUESTIONS OF GAS.
The first is, Where and how is food made into gas while in the body? If you will listen to a dyspeptic after eating you will wonder where he gets all the wind that he rifts from his stomach, and continues for one or two hours after each meal. That gas is generated in the stomach and intestines, and we are led to believe so because we know of no other place in which it can be made and thrown into the stomach by any tubes or other methods of entry. Thus by the evidence so far the stomach and bowels are the one place in which this gas is generated. Now comes question two: As I have spoken of the stomach that generates and ejects great quant.i.ties of gas for a longer or shorter time after meals, this cla.s.s of people have always been called dyspeptics. Another cla.s.s of the same race of beings stand side by side with him, without this gas generating. He, too, eats and drinks of the same kind of food, without any of the manifestations that have been described in the first cla.s.s.
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