Esoteric anthropology (the mysteries of man) : a comprehensive and confidential treatise on the structure, functions, passional attractions, and perversions, true and false physical and social conditions, and the most intimate relations of men and women. Anatomical, physiological, pathological, therapeutical and obstetrical, hygienic and hydropathic / by T.L. Nichols.

  • Nichols, Thomas Low, 1815-1901.
Date:
[1873]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Esoteric anthropology (the mysteries of man) : a comprehensive and confidential treatise on the structure, functions, passional attractions, and perversions, true and false physical and social conditions, and the most intimate relations of men and women. Anatomical, physiological, pathological, therapeutical and obstetrical, hygienic and hydropathic / by T.L. Nichols. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    piration. The cavity of the chest is enlarged some eighteen times a minute, by raising the ribs and sternum, and still more by straightening or drawing down the diaphragm, or muscular sepa- ration between the thorax and abdomen. When this is done, the air rushes into the lungs, to prevent the vacuum that would otherwise be formed. Next, the three sheets of abdominal muscles contract, force up the diaphragm, draw down the ribs, and forcibly expel the air: and this action is kept up, night and day, sleeping and waking, from the moment of birth till death; while the heart, a muscular organ, contracts four times as often during the same period. The whole body of man, in all its parts and or- gans, is, during all this time, the scene of various and con- stant action. Muscles are organs of voluntary or involuntary, conscious or unconscious, motion. We have no direct control over the heart, or the muscular fibres of the stomach, intestines, bladder, uterus. We can govern some- what those of respiration. The muscle- of swallowing are involuntary. When a morsel of food is pressed back by the tongue beyond the fauces, it is seized. pig. 6.—Muscular System.