We will close this chapter by propounding a few questions which the Osteopath should keep in mind.
Are the human and animal forms complete as working machines?
Has nature furnished man with powers to make his bones; give them the needed shapes of durable material, strong in kind?
Does a section in nature's law provide fastenings to hold these to one another?
Then another question arises: How will this body move, and where and how is the force applied?
Where and how is this force obtained?
How is it generated and supplied to these parts of motion?
What makes these muscles, ligaments, nerves, veins, arteries?
Are they self-forming, or has nature prepared machinery to make them?
Does animal life contain knowledge and force to construct all of the parts of man?
Can it run the machine after it has finished it?
By what power does it move?
Is there a blood vessel running to all parts of this body to supply all these demands?
If it has a battery of force, where is it?
What does it use for force?
Is it electricity? If so how does it collect and use this substance?
How does it convey its powers to any or all places?
How does the man keep warm without fire?
How does he build and lose flesh all the time?
Where and how is the supply made and delivered to proper places?
How is it applied and what holds it to its place when adjusted?
What makes it build the house of life?
Do demand and supply govern the work? If not, what does?
Are the laws of animal life sufficient to do all this work of building and repairing wastes and keep it in running condition?
If it does, what can man do or suggest to help it?
Is this machine capable of being run fast or slow if need be?
Does man have in him some kind of chemical laboratory that can turn out such products as he needs to fill all his physical demands?
If by heat, exercise, or any other cause he gets warm, can that chemistry cool him to normal?
If too cold can it warm him? Can it adjust him to heat and cold?
If so, how is it done? Is the law of life and longevity fully vindicated in man's make up?
CHAPTER XIV.
Has Man Degenerated?
The Advent of Man—Care of the Stock Raiser—Mental Degeneration Makes It Unpleasant for an Original Thinker—Original Thinkers of the Ancients—Methods of Healing—Failure of Allopathy—Primitive Man—Evidences of Prehistoric Man—Mental Dwarfage.
THE ADVENT OF MAN.
The exact time when man's foot appeared on the earth, no record shows. A knowledge of his advent might be profitable. The unwritten history of the human races with the genius or lack of genius, might to us be an open book of knowledge. As it is not supposable that the mind of man has just become observingly active in the last few centuries, absolute evidence of purer and deeper reason than we have been able to present, stand recorded on the faces of many valuable "lost arts" which we have never been able to equal. Is it not very reasonable to suppose that the powers of mind have wonderfully degenerated from some cause?
CARE OF THE STOCK RAISER.
The stock raiser carefully preserves the best and most healthy of the males and females of his flocks and herds for breeding purposes, that their offspring might be healthy and well developed, for the purposes for which he raises them. As a result he raises stock from the poultry house up, with marked improvement in form, strength and usefulness. Should he be foolish enough to kill off all the healthy and well developed males as they appear in his herds of cattle and other stock, for one or two centuries, would any one with average intelligence suppose that the standard of animals would or could be kept up, by breeding from the unfortunate stock, that had been pierced through the lungs while fighting with more powerful animals. If for breeding purposes he would save calves, colts, lambs, pigs, goats or any other young males to breed from, that had had a leg frozen off, one or both eyes plucked out, necks and ears torn by panthers, what would you think of the man's sanity?