Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-07-05

1ng,-ls never the same tor one second. so with
The human body is a prodigious worker,-the
most compact and powerful engine known. In a
single day the body of healthy does work
equal to lifting weight of thirty-siX hundred tons
foot from the ground. at hard labor.
a ongshoreman, for instance, helping to load ship.
will do work of two hundred to two hundred and
fifty foot-tons day. So it will be understood that
the body in its general activity does the work of
fourteen fifteen This is many times what
any made engine can do.
Marvels of the Heart
TN order to make this more clear, let us for a mo-
ment glance at the work of the heart. The heart
is merely a hollow muscle. consisting of two pumps,
of which sends blood to the lungs, the other
pumping blood through the tissues Each side of the
heart holds two ounces of blood: and as the heart
contracts about seventv-fve times a minute this
means that hundred and fifty ounces, or about
and one-sixth gallons, of blood passes through
each side of the heart every minute That IS, about
seventy gallons every hour. sixteen hundred and
eighty gallons every day. six hundred and three
thousand gallons in year, is pumped by each OF
the ventricles, making the total work of the heart
for the year one million hundred and six
thousand gallons. Think of the work done by
the heart in ten years in twenty or in l1fetimel
And the heart weighs about half pound!
The stream of blood leaving the heart travels
six hundred and twenty -one feet minute seven
miles hour. one hundred and sixtyeight miles
day, sxty-one thousand miles year. No man
probably has travelled far as his own blood
has For the blood to make the entire double cir
cult from heart to lungs, then back to the heart.
again, requires in the adult about twentythTee
seconds. In the smaller body of the child the cir
cult is made much rapidly and the heart beats
correspondngly faster. For instance, at BIRTH the
heart beats at about hundred and thirty-siX to
the minute, and the blood stream makes its entire
fgure-eight circuit in about twelve seconds. At
three years old the heart rate is one hundred and
eight, and the blood stream makes its journey in
about fifteen seconds; at five the pulse is eighty
eight and the blood circuit requires eighteen seconds
The blood is the great river OF life, StupendOUS
waterway, the most pOpulOuS that can be imagined,
teeming with traffic. Laborers soldiers carriers
countless millions of millions of busy workers. crowd
it coming and going, each with his special duty to
attend to- In a cubic inch of blood there twelve
thousand millions of class of these tiny aborers
There nearly two gallons of blood in the human
body, and gallon contains two hundred and thirty
cubic inches. So by multiplying twelve thousand
millions by two hundred and thirty Lone we shall get
approximately the number of the erythrocytes the
red en-carbOndoXid carriers, in the blood. If
these little carriers could be spread in layer they
would a surface Of twenty Eight thousand
square feet.
The red carriers not the only workers en-
barked in the great Unreasonable waterway the
blood stream There others less numerous
more intelligent, adaptable, versatile.
Their duties various and important; in fact
they are the real feeders the faithful guardians
and the efficient repairers of the body.
What the Lungs Do
NOTHING is more interesting than the body's
methods of economy. For instance, in its
work of taking in oxygen and throwing off carbon
doxid, it needs space, surface. And there has
been evolved method by which in the lungs the
inhaled air reaches surface of sixteen hundred
square feet The peculiar little openings, vesi-
cles, by which this economy of space is gained are
six hundred millions in number. There passes into
and out of the lungs in one day no less than four
hundred cubic feet of air. Each outgoing breath
contains two cubic inches of carbondioXd, and
teammates five thousand cubic inches, about hall
barrel of air. The lungs eXhale every day amount
OF carbon that if caught and soded would about
The air breathed out is moving at a speed of