lower limbs, a controlling and governing power over them still remains in the body. For if the soles of the disabled feet be tickled, though the mind does not feel the tickling, the legs will be jerked up, just as would be the case in an uninjured person. Again, if a series of galvanic shocks be sent along the spinal cord, the legs will perform movements even more powerful than those which the will could produce in an uninjured person. And, finally, if the injury is of such a nature as not simply to divide or injure the spinal cord in one place only, but to crush or profoundly disorganise it altogether, all these phenomena cease; tickling the soles, or sending galvanic shocks along the spine, will produce no effect upon the legs.

By examinations of this kind carried still further, we arrive at the remarkable result that while the brain is the seat of all sensation and mental action, and the primary source of all voluntary muscular contractions, the spinal cord is by itself capable of receiving an impression from the exterior, and converting it not only into a simple muscular contraction, but into a combination of such actions.

Thus, in general terms, we may say of the cerebrospinal nervous centres, that they have the power, when they receive certain impressions from without, of giving rise to simple or combined muscular contractions.

18. But you will further note that these impressions from without are of very different characters. Any part of the surface of the body may be so affected as to give rise to the sensations of contact, or of heat or cold; and any or every substance is able, under certain circumstances, to produce these sensations. But only very few and comparatively small portions of the bodily framework are competent to be affected, in such a manner as to cause the sensations of taste or of smell, of sight or of hearing and only a few substances, or particular kinds of vibrations, are able so to affect those regions. These very limited parts of the body, which put us in relation with particular kinds of substances, or forms of force, are what are termed sensory organs. There are two such organs for sight, two for hearing, two for smell, and one, or more strictly speaking two, for taste.

19. And now that we have taken this brief view of the

structure of the body, of the organs which support it, of the organs which move it, and of the organs which put it in relation with the surrounding world, or, in other words, enable it to move in harmony with influences from without, we must consider the means by which all this wonderful apparatus is kept in working order.

All work, as we have seen, implies waste. The work of the nervous system and that of the muscles, therefore, implies consumption either of their own substance, or of something else. And as the organism can make nothing, it must possess the means of obtaining from without that which it wants, and of throwing off from itself that which it wastes; and we have seen that, in the gross, it does these things. The body feeds, and it excretes. But we must now pass from the broad fact to the mechanism by which the fact is brought about. The organs which convert food into nutriment are the organs of alimentation; those which distribute nutriment all over the body are organs of circulation; those which get rid of the waste products are organs of excretion.

20. The organs of alimentation are the mouth, pharynx, gullet, stomach, and intestines, with their appendages. What they do is, first to receive and grind the food. They then act upon it with chemical agents, of which they possess a store which is renewed as fast as it is wasted; and in this way separate the food into a fluid containing nutritious matters in solution or suspension, and innutritious dregs or faces.

21. A system of minute tubes, with very thin walls, termed capillaries, is distributed through the whole organism except the epidermis and its products, the epithelium, the cartilages, and the substance of the teeth. On all sides, these tubes pass into others, which are called arteries and veins; while these, becoming larger and larger, at length open into the heart, an organ which, as we have seen, is placed in the thorax. During life, these tubes and the chambers of the heart, with which they are connected, are all full of liquid, which is, for the most part, that red fluid with which we are all familiar as blood.

The walls of the heart are muscular, and contract rhythmically, or at regular intervals. By means of these

contractions the blood which its cavities contain is driven in jets out of these cavities, into the arteries, and thence into the capillaries, whence it returns by the veins back into the heart.

This is the circulation of the blood.

22. Now the fluid containing the dissolved or suspended nutritive matters which are the result of the process of digestion, traverses the very thin layer of soft and permeable tissue which separates the cavity of the alimentary canal from the cavities of the innumerable capillary vessels which lie in the walls of that canal, and so enters the blood, with which those capillaries are filled. Whirled away by the torrent of the circulation, the blood, thus charged with nutritive matter, enters the heart, and is thence propelled into the organs of the body. To these organs it supplies the nutriment with which it is charged; from them it takes their waste products, and, finally, returns by the veins, loaded with useless and injurious excretions, which sooner or later take the form of water, carbonic acid, and urea.

23. These excretionary matters are separated from the blood by the excretory organs, of which there are three— the skin, the lungs, and the kidneys.

Different as these organs may be in appearance, they are constructed upon one and the same principle. Each, in ultimate analysis, consists of a very thin sheet of tissue, like so much delicate blotting-paper, the one face of which is free, or lines a cavity in communication with the exterior of the body, while the other is in contact with the blood which has to be purified.

The excreted matters are, as it were (though, as we shall see, in a peculiar way), strained from the blood, through this delicate layer of filtering-tissue, and on to its free surface, whence they make their escape.

Each of these organs is especially concerned in the elimination of one of the chief waste products-water, carbonic acid, and urea-though it may at the same time be a means of escape for the others. Thus the lungs are especially busied in getting rid of carbonic acid, but at the same time they give off a good deal of water. The duty of the kidneys is to excrete urea (together with other saline matters), but at the same time they pass away a

large quantity of water and a trifling amount of carbonic acid; while the skin gives off much water, some amount of carbonic acid, and a certain quantity of saline matter, among which urea may be, sometimes at all events, present.

24. Finally the lungs play a double part, being not merely eliminators of waste, or excretionary products, but importers into the economy of a substance which is not exactly either food or drink, but something as important as either,—to wit, oxygen.

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As the carbonic acid (and water) is passing from the blood through the lungs into the external air, oxygen is passing from the air through the lungs into the blood, and is carried, as we shall see, by the blood to all parts of the body. We have seen (p. 5) that the waste which leaves the body contains more oxygen than the food which enters the body. Indeed oxidation, the oxygen being supplied by the blood, is going on all over the body. All parts of the body are continually being oxidized, or, in other words, are continually burning, some rapidly and fiercely than others. And this burning, though it is carried on in a peculiar manner, so as never to give rise to a flame, yet nevertheless produces an amount of heat which is as efficient as a fire to raise the blood to a temperature of about 100°; and this hot fluid, incessantly renewed in all parts of the economy by the torrent of the circulation, warms the body, as a house is warmed by a hot-water apparatus. Nor is it alone the heat of the body which is provided by this oxidation; the energy which appears in the muscular work done by the body has the same source. Just as the burning of the coal in a steam-engine supplies the motive power which drives the wheels, so, though in a peculiar way, the oxidation of the muscles (and thus ultimately of the food) supplies the motive power of those muscular contractions which carry out the movements of the body. The food, like coal combustible or capable of oxidation, is built up into the living body, which in like manner combustible, is continually being oxidized by the oxygen of the blood, thus doing work and giving out heat. Some of the food perhaps may be oxidized without ever actually forming part of the body or after it has already become waste matter, but this does not concern us now.

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25. These alimentary, distributive or circulatory, excretory, and combustive processes would however be worse than useless if they were not kept in strict proportion one to another. If the state of physiological balance is to be maintained, not only must the quantity of aliment taken be at least equivalent to the quantity of matter excreted; but that aliment must be distributed with due rapidity to the seat of each local waste. The circulatory system is the commissariat of the physiological army.

Again, if the body is to be maintained at a tolerably even temperature, while that of the air is constantly varying, the condition of the hot-water apparatus must be inost carefully regulated.

In other words, a combining organ must be added to the organs already mentioned, and this is found in the nervous system, which not only possesses the function already described of enabling us to move our bodies and to know what is going on in the external world; but makes us aware of the need of food, enables us to discriminate nutritious from innutritious matters, and to exert the muscular actions needful for seizing, killing, and cooking; guides the hand to the mouth, and governs all the movements of the jaws and of the alimentary canal. By it, the working of the heart is properly adjusted and the calibres of the distributing pipes are regulated, so as indirectly to govern the excretory and combustive processes. And these are also more directly affected by other actions of the nervous system.

26. The various functions which have been thus briefly indicated constitute the greater part of what are called the vital actions of the human body, and so long as they are performed, the body is said to possess life. The cessation of the performance of these functions is what is ordinarily called death.

But there are really several kinds of death, which may, in the first place, be distinguished from one another under the two heads of local and of general death.

27. Local death is going on at every moment, and in most, if not in all, parts of the living body. Individual cells of the epidermis and of the epithelium are incessantly dying and being cast off, to be replaced by others which are, as constantly, coming into separate existence.