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Untitled Article
There are throughout the alimentary canal the lacteal vessels , taking up the aliment , and also carrying it to the great vein , to he sent to the lungs and converted into fresh blood . There are all over the body , the absorbents in countless numbers , taking away whatever is useless or noxious , some of it to be sent to the great organ of purification the lungs , some to be expelled from the system . Then there are organs whose main function is to abstract from the blood whatever would
overload or deteriorate it—but an example of their action may be useful . 4 Do you need an illustration of the occasion that calls for their interference , and of the promptitude with which they obey the call ? See that red-faced , full-veined , robust looking man , somewhere between forty and sixty years of age . He sits down to a good dinner with a good appetite . He eats three times as much as he needs , and he
excites the stomach to digest the load , by drinking stimulating fluids to six times the quantity that is requisite . What follows ? The capillary arteries are stimulated to the utmost action of which they are capable . The capillary veins are turgid to the utmost degree of expansibility which they can reach . The system is full to repletion . The external surface is plump and rounded . The extremities are even swollen . The mass of circulating fluids is actually increased , perhaps , if the
dinner has been good 9 one-sixth—if very good , one-third or more . The system is in danger . The vessels are fuller than they can bear , and the stimulus of distension excites them to an increased action , the violence of which is proportioned to their fulness . Exquisitely delicate as you have seen some of these vessels to be , the wonder is , that they do not burst , and burst they do sometimes . But why do they not always burst ? Because instantly exhalation from the lungs is increased , secretion from the whole internal surface of the alimentary
canal is increased ; secretion from the kidney is increased ; rapidly thereby the superfluous quantity , or at least , the urgently dangerous superfluity is carried out of the system , and wonderful is the peace and comfort of the sufferer , after his panting- respiration has expelled fluid from his lungs , and his perspiring akin from the whole external surface of the body . And now you see that these organs are the safety valves of the circulation , and thereby of the system , and you see also how they work . '
After contrasting the pleasurable sensations experienced in sound health , when every organ performs its own functions , and the due balance is kept up between the work each has to do , and the work it performs , with the suffering and disease when the balance is overturned , and when one or more of them fail ; the lecturer went on—• Now , over all the sensations of which I have spoken , we have ourselves a great control . To a very considerable extent , we can make
them , at our pleasure , such as are conducible to a high degree of physical and mental health and vigour , or to physical and mental disease and feebleness . And the main instruments by which every one is capable of exercising this control over the states of his own system are food , air , temperature , and exercise . ' Without a due supply of nutritious food , the blood that is formed must be deficient in quantity , and bad in quality . It will be without the essential attributes of the blood ; it will be alike incapable of uou-
Untitled Article
20 ? Dr . Southwood Smith on the Animal Economy .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1833, page 202, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2610/page/58/
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