V.—The Interior Hierarchy

The world awaits that pundit who will study at length the relative respectability of the inward parts of man—his pipes and bellows, his liver and lights. The inquiry will take him far into the twilight zones of psychology. Why is the vermiform appendix so much more virtuous and dignified than its next-door neighbor, the cæcum? Considered physiologically, anatomically, pathologically, surgically, the cæcum is the decenter of the two. It has more cleanly habits; it is more beautiful; it serves a more useful purpose; it brings its owner less often to the doors of death. And yet what would one think of a lady who mentioned her cæcum? But the appendix—ah, the appendix! The appendix is pure, polite, ladylike, even noble. It confers an unmistakable stateliness, a stamp of position, a social consequence upon its possessor. And, by one of the mysteries of viscerology, it confers even more stateliness upon its ex-possessor!

Alas, what would you! Why is the stomach such a libertine and outlaw in England, and so highly respectable in the United States? No Englishman of good breeding, save he be far gone in liquor, ever mentions his stomach in the presence of women, clergymen, or the Royal Family. To avoid the necessity—for Englishmen, too, are subject to the colic—he employs various far-fetched euphemisms, among them, the poetical Little Mary. No such squeamishness is known in America. The American discusses his stomach as freely as he discusses his business. More, he regards its name with a degree of respect verging upon reverence—and so he uses it as a euphemism for the whole region from the diaphragm to the pelvic arch. Below his heart he has only a stomach and a vermiform appendix.

In the Englishman that large region is filled entirely by his liver, at least in polite conversation. He never mentions his kidneys save to his medical adviser, but he will tell even a parlor maid that he is feeling liverish. “Sorry, old chap; I’m not up to it. Been seedy for a fortnight. Touch of liver, I dessay. Never felt quite fit since I came Home. Bones full of fever. Damned old liver always kicking up. Awfully sorry, old fellow. Awsk me again. Glad to, pon my word.” But never the American! Nay, the American keeps his liver for his secret thoughts. Hobnailed it may be, and the most interesting thing within his frontiers, but he would blush to mention it to a lady.

Myself intensely ignorant of anatomy, and even more so of the punctilio, I yet attempted, one rainy day, a roster of the bodily parts in the order of their respectability. Class I was small and exclusive; when I had put in the heart, the brain, the hair, the eyes and the vermiform appendix, I had exhausted all the candidates. Here were the five aristocrats, of dignity even in their diseases—appendicitis, angina pectoris, aphasia, acute alcoholism, astigmatism: what a row of a’s! Here were the dukes, the cardinals, nay, the princes of the blood. Here were the supermembers; the beyond-parts.

In Class II I found a more motley throng, led by the collar-bone on the one hand and the tonsils on the other. And in Class III—but let me present my classification and have done:

CLASS II

CLASS III