The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1904-05-20
THE ANATOMY OF MAN
SOME HIDDEN FEATURES AND 9TH
ERS THAT ARE USELESS.

SOME HIDDEN FEATURES AND 9TH
ERS THAT ARE USELESS.
An Eye That Is Now Blind and ellis
That Arc Closed Up-The Outer Ears
and the Toe Nails Arc More Orna-
mental Than ServiceabIe.
Has. ANY one ever complimentcd you
on the beauty Of your upper eye or in
quired after your gills? For, though
you may not know it, you number
these among the disused features of
your body.
In the center of your brain, looking
vaguely skyward, lie the atrophied re-
mains of a third eye, which, it is sup
posed, was actually one of mans use
full features at some previous state of
development 1t is known as the pineal
gland, though covered by skin, and is
formed in an almost perfect condition
in certain lizards.
You have four gills, or bronchial
clefts, which, however, are now closed
up and useless. You originally had
six, but two of them, by forming into
your ear and mouth respectively,
turned themselves to some account.
However, before your lungs developed
and became fitted to carry on your
breathing system, the work was done
by the four gills which have since
childhood ceased to develop and be-
come closed up.
Your carS-that is, the outer ones
are quite useless save as ornaments.
You could hear just IS well without
them. All the work of hearing is done
by the middle ear, or tympanum, and
the internal Var. The outer feature is
purely a pleasant sort of finishing
touch to your hearing system. The
muscles of the outer ear are powerless
and not under our control.
Are you aware that you have a mini
allure grand piano in your auditory
nerve, which is tuned up to every note
in music? This is known as Corti's
organ and consists of series of tiny
hairs which vibrate on the drum Of
your car and enable you to distinguish
the differences of sounds.
AS sometimes when you strike a note
on the piano some ornament in the
room will be found to sing with 1t, SO
each of these hairs inside your ear vi
brates in sympathy with the musical
sound corresponding with it.
An appendix is generally useful
thing when applied to books, but mans
appendix is not only useless, but very
troublesome. This is the remains of
an intestine supposed to have formed
part of our ancestors. Though many
other parts of the body are practically
useless, they are supposed to have
been useful Mt some time, but scien-
fists cannot trace that the ycrmiform
appendix was ever of any service to
man.
Toe nails are entirely useless, and
toes are quite superfiuous. A man
could get along as well without toes.
In fact, n doctor removed eight of a
mans toes without any Inconvenience
being suffered, and the loser got along
quite as well without them.
The teeth are rapidly becoming quite
useless. Now that nearly all our food
have to bite through hard substances
teeth are gradually dccaying.
The fact that the teeth of our an
cestors 100 or 500 years ago were in
finitely bigger than our own shows
that nature is gradually taking away
these organs.
Tonsils, too, are almost useless and
fulfill no serviceable object to the body.
People can get along quite well with
out them, and very large proportion
OF the population have had them re-
moved.
Both the hair and the skin have end
ed their days of usefulness to the hIl-
man race. The hair was intended to
cover our heads from the heat of the
sun. We cover up the hair, and by
shutting it off from the exposure which
gradually but surely losing this adorn-
ment, and it is estimated that in time
We shall cease to grow It.
AS to the skin, it was given US to
protect our bodies from the elements.
BY covering it up with clothing and
it getting proper respira-
ton we deprive ourselves of its use.
1t is not inconceivable that the man of
q very remote future period may be
not only hairless and toothless, but
SkinleSs as well.
The most extraordinary thing to be
noted about all this is that those parts
of the body which are useless give us
the most trouble, while those in con-
slant activity remain quiescent. The
teeth, through lack of work, get lazy,
as 1t were, and decay.
The tonsils, having nothing to Go,
make your life misery to you through
continually swelling until they are re-
moved. The skin, which is useless to
civilis ed man, has q large variety of
diseases to vent ON US, largely due to
its compressed condition.
The vermiform appendix, which is
absolutely useless, has nice little dis
ease of its own, which it develops with
often fatal results, known as appendi-
citis.
A man can live without his frontal
bone. At q recent accident a workman
was struck by q crowbar. The only
possibility of saving his life was by
eXcising the frontal bone. The result
was that the man survived, without Sc
rious injury, though he was conscious
of some mental defect.
1t is quite possible that an artist,
writer or musician would find the eff
feet of the removal to deprive him of
the particular faculty for producing
his work, but otherwise his brain
functions.
The Truth of 1t.
$50 Jagsby has absconded Anoth-