ANIMAL LIFE.
The animal, like the vegetable, is also composed of chemical elements, and by chemical analysis has been found to contain eighteen, as follows:
1. Of primary or vital importance: Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen.
2. Of secondary importance, entering into the more solid structures: sulphur, phosphorus, calcium, sodium, chlorine, silicon, potassium, fluorine, magnesia, iron.
3. Accidental constituents: Magnesium, alumina, copper, and lead.
The compounds found in the body are recognized as being derived from organic and inorganic substances.
Organic substances are obtained:
1. From plants and vegetables, and are termed carbohydrates or non-nitrogenous substances, being composed of Oxygen, Carbon, and Hydrogen—as starch, sugar, etc.
2. From animals: nitrogenous substances; these compounds contain Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon, and Nitrogen—as meat, white of eggs; these are also termed albuminous.
3. Mineral, elements of inorganic origin, as soda, potassium, phosphorus, etc.
The more highly organized tissues found in the animal are composed of five elements, as muscle, brain, blood; these are Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and sulphur.
Albumen, for example, exists in most of the tissues of the body, but especially in the nervous tissue, lymph, chyle, blood, etc.
Fibrine is found most abundantly in the blood and the more perfect portions of the lymph and chyle.
Gelatinous substances are contained in the cellular or fibro-cellular tissues in all parts of the body, as tendons, ligaments, cartilages, bone, skin, mucous membranes, etc.
Chondrine is obtained from cartilages, etc.
The general chemical composition of these substances is as follows:
| Albumen. | Fibrine. | Gelatine. | Chondrine. | ||||||
| Carbon | 52 | .5 | 52 | .7 | 50 | .40 | 49 | .97 | |
| Hydrogen | 7 | .0 | 6 | .9 | 6 | .64 | 6 | .63 | |
| Nitrogen | 15 | .5 | 15 | .4 | 18 | .34 | 14 | .44 | |
| Oxygen | 22 | .0 | 23 | .5 | 28 | .58 | |||
| Sulphur | 1 | .6 | 1 | .2 | 24 | .36 |  | 0 | .38 |
| (Inorganic elements.) | |||||||||
| Phosphorus | 0 | .4 | 0 | .3 | |||||
| 100 | .00 | 100 | .00 | 100 | .00 | 100 | .00 | ||
It will be observed that in the composition of these tissues, more than half of their constituent elements is Carbon. There is but a very small quantity of Hydrogen.
The most abundant inorganic substance in the body is water, which is composed of Oxygen one and Hydrogen two (OH2). More than two-thirds of the body is made up of water.
The body is composed of various structures. Of the chief tissues of the human body, the weight is as follows:
| The skeleton | 15.9 | per cent. |
| The muscles | 41.8 | per,, cent.,, |
| Thoracic Viscera (lungs, heart, etc.) | 1.7 | per,, cent.,, |
| Abdominal Viscera (liver, etc.) | 7.2 | per,, cent.,, |
| Fat | 18.2 | per,, cent.,, |
| Skin | 6.9 | per,, cent.,, |
| Brain | 1.9 | per,, cent.,, |
Let us examine, briefly, each of these.
The skeleton.—The skeleton, or solid framework of the body, is mainly formed of bones, but is completed in some parts by the addition of cartilages. The bones are bound together by means of ligaments, and are so disposed as to support the softer parts, protect delicate organs, and give attachment to the muscles by which the different movements are executed.
There are two hundred and four bones in the body:
| The vertebral column contains | 26 |
| The skull—cranium and face | 22 |
| The hyoid bone—bone of the tongue | 1 |
| Ribs and sternum, forming the thorax | 25 |
| The upper limbs—arms and shoulders | 64 |
| The lower limbs | 62 |
| Small bones, including the patella or kneecap, to the number of | 16 |
The organic constituents form about 33.3 per cent of the composition of bone, while the remainder, 66.7 per cent, is inorganic matter; as follows:
| Organic matter (gelatine and blood-vessels) | 33.30 | ||
| Inorganic substances |  | Phosphate of lime | 51.04 |
| Carbonate of lime | 11.30 | ||
| Fluoride of calcium | 2.00 | ||
| Phosphate of magnesia | 1.16 | ||
| Soda and chloride of sodium | 1.20 | ||
The mineral or earthy matter enters very largely into the composition of bone.
A fibrous membrane covers bone externally, and is called periosteum. The hollow bones contain marrow, composed of fat, 96 parts; water, 3; connecting tissue, 1. Bones are supplied with blood-vessels, which carry the nutritious fluid to them.
1. The master tissues. Primarily, it is the tissue, and not the blood, that gets loaded with carbonic acid, the latter simply receiving the gas from the former by diffusion, and the oxygen which passes from the blood into the tissues being at once taken up in some combination.
2. Nearly one-half of the weight of the body consists of the skeletal muscles, and about one-quarter of the total blood in the body is contained in them.
3. The muscles are always producing carbonic acid (CO2), and when they contract there is a sudden and extensive increase of the normal production.
4. Oxygen is necessary for the life of the muscle; it is for the nervous tissue, but for muscular tissue especially.
5. When venous blood, instead of arterial, is sent through the blood-vessel of a muscle, the irritability speedily disappears, and unless fresh oxygen is administered the muscle soon ceases to act and dies.
6. The oxidation power is determined by the tissue and by the tissue only.
7. All the available evidence goes to show that oxidation takes place in all the tissues and not in the adjoining blood.
The master tissues of the body are the muscular and nervous tissues. All other tissues may be regarded as the servants to these.
These tissues are the all-important tissues in the body. The muscular tissues constitute and carry out the power, force, or energy of the body. They set the body in motion. They do the work. They regulate the delicate movements of the organs of special sense or function, as the eye, the ear, the tongue, the nose, larynx, thorax, abdomen; and fighting, defending, building, destroying, labor and mechanical skill of whatever nature, depend on them. Of exercise, sport, pain and pleasure, sensation, emotion, expression of the face, in fact all in all in every act of life, the muscles, the voluntary muscles, must perform the work.
They are called the muscles of Animal life. They are Voluntary; they may be set in action at will.
For guidance, control, coördination, sensation, and motion, the muscular tissues are dependent on the nervous tissues.
It is not difficult to understand, I think, as will be explained later on, that all muscular movements are perfectly natural, purely physical and mechanical.
The nervous tissue will be a little more difficult to comprehend, for causes that are reasonable and plain.
All animals are provided with two distinct sets of organs: 1. The master tissues, the nervous and muscular tissues, the voluntary muscular tissues, which are the organs of animal life, the voluntary, the active organs that do the work, consume the food, and throw off the waste material; and 2. The servants to these, the involuntary tissues, the organs of organic life that prepare the food, carry it to the master tissues, and bring away the waste material.
The inherent qualities of both these sets of organs are instinctive, with this difference—the former, the voluntary, the controlling and working master tissues, are capable of development, progressively, acquiring intelligence, maturing into educatedness, etc.
The latter, the involuntary, are simply servants to these, and they perform their functions in the same manner instinctively all through life.
The muscular and nervous tissues are the educable tissue. By repetition, practice, and exercise they improve and at length exhibit certain degrees of skill in the performance of their work.
On the other hand, the organs of mastication, deglutition, digestion, absorption, excretion, circulation, and respiration simply perform their functions instinctively, without possessing the capacity of improvement, and without regard to volition. These act involuntarily throughout life, as preparers and carriers of nourishment to the master tissues, and removers of waste material.
The work of the muscular tissues is comparatively easy to understand. We can see the work done, can account for it, can demonstrate it. The performances are capable of absolute proof, and controversy therefore is out of question.
The nervous tissues present quite another state of things. The great mass of cerebral matter, with all its complicated organs and their appendages, are hid within the cranium of the skull. We have no ocular proof of anything that is done by that structure, or of the manner in which the tissue acts. That we can see, hear, taste, and smell we know. We recognize the organs that perform these functions. Sensation, feeling, memory, thinking, cannot so easily be accounted for. Among the masses it is a mystery to-day. The doctrine of a dual existence in man is old, still it is held on to with remarkable tenacity. The church still teaches and preaches that soul or spirit is a part of some great personality or individuality not at all connected with nature—supernatural, divine, godly. This supernatural part, it is said, is placed in man some time during the process of birth. This subject will be more fully discussed farther on, in order to show what queer views theologians formerly held on some scientific subjects. I beg to quote from a Talmudistic scholar and philosopher some thousand years ago: