Ourselves, our food, and our physic / [Benjamin Ridge].

  • Ridge, Benjamin
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ourselves, our food, and our physic / [Benjamin Ridge]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    converted all organic matter into a purely alkaline humus, is thus fitted for the support of vegetable life. All organ¬ ized matter has excess of acid while living, but after death, alkaline predominates. We find the worm tribe living on and consuming this purely alkaline substance ; yet in them¬ selves obeying the same laws of all animal life, in being four-fifths self-dependent beings. Life, then, as far as human intelligence has arrived, appears to rest on chemical bases, and thousands of labor¬ atories are always at work to produce and sustain it. The chemical actions have specific influences on the nerves, and every known powrer that produces either electric or galvanic currents out of the body, produces the same wdthin it. There is the friction of the circulation through the blood¬ vessels ; of muscles on each other ; organ against organ on the one hand, and the union of acids with alkalies on the other; all producing electric and galvanic action accom¬ panied by caloric or heat. In addition to these they are aided and assisted by the hydraulic action of all fluids and gases upon all erectile or muscular tissue. But that which sets everything in a higher state of vital energy is the moment of birth, when the air first gets into the lungs and develops their action. Then commences the most rapid progress of life ; the friction of air and the double action produced thereby ; the blood becoming oxidized. This is the moment when the electric current has a specific influence on the instinctive and reasoning powers, and, not only do the forces so lately in a negative state, become positive, but the nerves for the first time, through the agency of breath or air, become sentient. Until the air has entered into the lungs to produce the first pabulum of life to the body, it is a question if there is any sentient feeling, though we know there is motor or moving action. The effect of the air being thus wonderfully shown, ten thousand batteries keep the nervous chords or telegraphic wires of the body in constant action. Observe the plexal or combining system of the nerve apparatus, see how it is charged, and note the remarkable character of the two sets of nerves always running in pairs. The branches of the motor nerves terminate in an