AN EXPLORATION.
We must start our exploring boat with the aorta, and float with this vital current; see the captain as he unloads supplies for the diaphragm and all that is under it. We must follow him and see what branch of this river will lead to a little or great toe, or to the terminals of the whole foot. We must pass through the waters of the dead sea by the way of the vena cava, and observe the boats loaded with exhausted and worn out blood, as it is poured in and channeled back to the heart, with all below the diaphragm. Carefully watch the emptying of the vena azygos major and minor, with the veins of the arms and head all being poured in from little or great rivers to the vena innominate on their way to the great hospital of life and nourishment; whose quarter-master is the heart; whose finishing mechanic is the lung. Having acquainted ourselves with the forms and locations of this great personality we are ready at this time after examination, and found worthy and well qualified to enter into a higher class in which we can obtain an acquaintance with the physiological workings separately and conjoined of the whole being. At this place we become acquainted with the hows and whys of the production of blood, bone and all elements found in them, necessary to sustain sensation, motion, nutrition, voluntary and involuntary action of the nerve system. The hows and whys of the lymphatics, the life sustaining powers of the brain, heart, lungs, and all the abdominal system, with their various actions and uses, from the lowest cellular membrane to the highest organ of the body.
RESULT OF REMOVAL OF DIAPHRAGM.
When we consult the form of the cross-bar that divides the body in two conjoined divisions and reason on its use, we arrive at the fact that the heart and lungs must have ample space or room to suit their actions while performing their functions. At this time a question comes up: What effect would follow the removal of the fence between heart, lungs and brain, above that dividing muscle, and the machinery that is situated below said cross-bar? We see at a glance that we would meet failure to the extent of the infringement on demanded room for normal work of heart to deliver below lungs to prepare blood, and the brain to pass nerve power to either engine above, and all organs below the diaphragm.
SUSTAINING LIFE PRINCIPLES.
The life of the living tree is with the bark and superficial fascia which lies between the bark of the body of the tree, its periostium. The remainder of the tree takes the position or place of secreting. Its excretory system is first upwards from the surface of the ground, and washes out frozen impurities in the spring, after which it secretes and conveys to the ground through the trunk of the tree to the roots which is like unto the placenta attached to mother earth, qualifying all substances of constructing fiber and leaf, of that part of the tree above the ground. Each year produces a new tree which is seen and known by circular rings called annular growths. That growth which was completed last year is now a stale being of the past and has no vital action of itself. But like all stale beings its process is a life of another order, and dependent upon the fascia for its life and cellular action which lies under the bark, for its own existence as a living tree. It can only act as a chemical laboratory and furnish crude material which is taken up by the superficial fascia and conveyed up to the lungs, and exchanges dead for living matter, to receive and return to all parts of the tree, keeping up vital formation. With frost its vital process ceases through the winter season until mother earth stimulates the placenta, and starts the growth of a new being, which is developed and placed in form on the old trunk. Thus you see everything of animal growth as we would call them, is a new being, and becomes a part of the next being or growth formed.
STALE LIFE.
Should this form of vitality cease with the tree another principle which we call stale life takes possession and constructs another tree which is just the reverse of the living tree, and builds a tree after its own power of formulation from the dead matter, to which it imparts a principle of stale life, which life produces mushrooms, frogstools and other peculiar forms of stale beings, from this form of growth.
Thus we are prepared to reason that blood when ligated and retained in that condition of dead corpuscles, and no longer able to support animal life, can form a zoophyte and all the forms peculiar to the great law of association, as tumefactions of the lymphatics, pancreas, liver, kidneys, uterus, with all the glandular system, be they lymphatics, cellular, ganglia or any other parts of the body susceptible of such growths, below the diaphragm. Thus we can account for tubercles of the abdomen and all organs therein found.