452. Of excessive nutrition in early life. 453. Describe the parts that enter into the composition of the blood. What part of the blood forms the red gravy in roasted meats? 454. Is the blood necessarily red? Of what color is the blood of the fish? What part of the human system has white blood?
HYGIENE OF NUTRITION.
455. Healthy nutrition requires pure blood. If the nutrient arteries of the bones are supplied with impure blood, they will become soft or brittle, their vitality will be impaired, and disease will be the ultimate result. The five hundred muscles receive another portion of the blood. These organs are attached to, and act upon the bones. Upon the health and contractile energy of the muscles depends the ability to labor. Give these organs of motion impure blood, which is an unhealthy stimulus, and they will become enfeebled, the step will lose its elasticity, the movement of the arm will be inefficient, and every muscle will be incapacitated to perform its usual amount of labor.
456. When the stomach, liver, and other organs subservient to the digestion of food, are supplied with impure blood, the digestive process is impaired, causing faintness and loss of appetite, also a deranged state of the intestines, and, in general, all the symptoms of dyspepsia.
457. The delicate structure of the lungs, in which the blood is or should be purified, needs the requisite amount of pure blood to give them vigor and health. When the blood is not of this character, the lungs themselves lose their tone, and, even if permitted to expand freely, have not power fully to change the impure quality of this circulating fluid.
458. The health and beauty of the skin require that the blood should be well purified; but, if the arteries of the skin receive vitiated blood, pimples and blotches appear, and the individual suffers from “humors.” Drinks, made of various 206 kinds of herbs, as well as pills and powders, are taken for this affection. These will never have the desired effect, while the causes of impure blood exist.
455–462. Give the hygiene of nutrition. 455. What is the effect of impure blood upon the bones? On the muscles? 456. On the digestive organs? 457. On the lungs? 458. What is the effect if the vessels of the skin are supplied with vitiated blood?
459. If the nutrient arteries convey impure material to the brain, the nervous and bilious headache, confusion of ideas, loss of memory, impaired intellect, dimness of vision, and dulness of hearing, will be experienced; and in process of time, the brain becomes disorganized, and the brittle thread of life is broken.
Observations. 1st. An exertion of any organ beyond its powers, induces weakness that will disturb the nutrition of the part that is called into action; and it recovers its energy more slowly in proportion to the excess of the exertion. The function of the organ may be totally and permanently destroyed, if the exertion is extremely violent. We sometimes see palsy produced in a muscle simply by the effort to raise too great a weight. The sight is impaired, and total blindness may be produced, by exposure to light too strong or too constant. The mind may be deranged, or idiocy may follow the excess of study or the over-tasking of the brain.