How strange it is that all these parts of the body, so different from each other, are made from the same building material, the blood. But this is not all. The wax in your ears is made from the blood. So is the bile, that bitter stuff that is manufactured in the liver. The tears, too, are made from the blood. There are many other liquids in the body that are made from this common material. When you look into a person’s eye you look into a watery fluid, and the back part of the ball of the eye is filled with a sort of jelly; both of these are made from the blood.
But even this is not all. The arteries and veins in which the blood runs are made from the blood. Even the heart that pumps the blood is made from the blood that it pumps. This is as strange as it would be to have the walls of a canal made from the water that runs in it, or to have a pump made from the water that it pumps out.
Questions.—What is every thing in a plant made from? What is every thing in your body made from? Tell what is said about the bud and the finger, and about the stem and the arm. What is said about cutting off a branch and an arm? How is a child compared to a twig? Mention the different things in an apple-tree that are made from the sap. Are there more things made from your blood? Mention some of them that you can see. Mention some that are inside of the body that you can not see. What is said about the ear-wax, the bile, the tears, etc.? What about the arteries and veins, and the heart?
CHAPTER II.
MORE ABOUT WHAT IS MADE FROM THE BLOOD.
How wonderful it is that so many things are made from the blood.
How different from each other are some of the things that are made from the blood! You could hardly believe that the white, hard teeth are made from the same blood that the red, soft gums are. Suppose that while you are in a China-ware factory a man should tell you that even the whitest China is made from a red liquid, and that they also make in this factory fine red cloth from this liquid. You would not believe him. But white China-ware and the fine red cloth are not any more unlike than the teeth and the gums.
Suppose, now, that he should show you a yellow, bitter fluid, and then a clear, soft eye-water, and tell you that these he makes from the same red liquid from which the China and the red cloth are made. This certainly you would not believe. And yet, in our bodies, the bile and the tears are made from the same blood with the teeth and the gums.
But not only are a few things very much unlike made from the blood, but many things that differ from each other, some of them much and some but little. Suppose that the China-ware maker should tell you that besides making white China and red cloth from his red liquid, he made also a variety of both hard and soft things, such as velvet, and various kinds of cloth, nails, glass, etc. Impossible! you would say. But this is no more wonderful than that hair, teeth, gums, nails, bones, and all the different parts of the body should be made from that red fluid—the blood.
The China-ware factory.