The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1902-03-11
& hr Nera1d and Mews
THE HUMANs BODY.
The Most Wonderful Piece of Mocha =ism
Conceivable.

In the absolutely healthy man or
woman the great organs of the body
do their work imperceptibly; in other
words, healthy human being ought
not to know that it has heart, lungs,
stomach, liver, or anything of that
sort; and yet their working depends
on some of the merest trihes-if such
q word can be used in connection
with natures workings-and the ab
sence of any one of them would mean
the stoppage of the whole vital ma
chlnery.
For instance, to begin at the top:
When You swing your head from side
to side, or bend it backward or for
ward, you have only little cord
or igament between you and death.
The head is balanced on double
joint or pivot on-which it turns from
side to side, and sort of swing joint,
not exactly hinge, on which it
swings backward and forward. 1t is
this check ligament as it is called,
which prevents it from going too far
either way.
The reason is this: Immediately
in front of the peg of the pivot JOINT
is the channel of the spine through
which the spinal cord passes to the
brain, and II it were not for this vital
check string the head, which is bulk
for bulk, the heaviest part of the
body, would fall too far backward or
forward and crush the spinal cord.
Here is another vital trife which,
perhaps, you have never considered.
Bare your arms and press your finger
hard on the upper part of one of the
veins and pass it slowly down. You
will see the vein swell up into
little knots; take your finger awsy
and they will vanish. The reason
for this is that nearly all the veins
have little cups in them. The cups
open toward the heart, and thus,
when the blood is flowing in the right
direction they fold back and offer no
resistance. But they prevent any
fluid flowing IN the opposite direction
During waking life many of the
long veins are more or less perpen-
dicular, and but for these cups, or
valves, the blood would naturally tend
to flow down the vein. This would
partially, if not entirely, arrest the
circulation; the heart would be un
able to pump the poisoned blood into
the lungs, to be renewed by contact
with the alr, and suffocation would
follow in few minutes. Wherefore,
without these Insignificant little cups,
none of which hold a quarter of a
thimbleful, no human could live.
The blood is composed of gray
fluid in which myriads of tiny little
bodies, some white and some red, are
floating.
They are about 5,200th part of an
inch in diameter. They are enclosed
in an envelope which has the pecu-
liar properties of permitting gssses
but not liquids, to pass through it.
Il is this which enables them to take
up the oxygen of the air as it goes
into the lungs and to convey it to all
parts of the body. Oxygen is, Of
course, as necessary to the body as
air is to fire.
Now if liquids could pass through
these tiny envelopes the fluid in
which they float would enter them,
crowd out the oxygen and put out
the vital fame just as surely as
food of water would put out a fire.
In fact, if this property of admitting
gases and excluding fluids were to be
reversed, the human race would cease
to exist inside a minute, because the
time taken for the blood to traverse
the whole system is about half a min
ute.
The same curious but beneicent
property is possessed by the vast net
work of tiny tubes, one 3,5OOth part
of an inch in diameter which lie i'm
mediately under the skin all over the
body; but their function is even
stranger still, for they will allow moth