A World of Billions 



Hy W. W. K K I'] X, M.l). 



Kiiieritiis rrofcssoi- of Surt;t'!"y, JcITitsou Mi'dical Collpge, i'liiUuli'lpliiu ; 

 Mn.itir Mt'ilii-;il Coi))s. I'liiti'd States Army 



"With the passing years, I am more and more impressed with tlie wonderful 'moclianism' of Nature, 

 which to me bespeaks — God." [Quoted from letter to the Editor.] 



OCCASIOXAT.r.Y it is a -ivat 

 relief to turn away for a sea- 

 son from a review of the Great 

 War with all its horrors, atrocities, and 

 sorrows, and think about some wliolly 

 detached subject. Our ])assions are 

 stilled, our emotions subdued, and <»iir 

 minds are freshened for a time 



"Does the title suggest the Lil)erty 

 Loans?'' you ask. N'o, not that. "Then 

 the number of bushels of various grains 

 in our harvests?" No, not that. "Then 

 it must be the number of dollars spent 

 every year or month or day Ijy the va- 

 rious belligerents ?" No, not even that. 

 You will hardly guess it. It came to my 

 mind in this wise. 



Not long since, one morning as I was 

 shaving, it suddenly occurred to me 

 that there were only two means by 

 which we could actually measure the' 

 growth of any part of the human body 

 from day to day — the finger nails and 

 the hair. During the Civil War. 8. Weir 

 Mitchell, George R. Morehouse, and 

 I often compared the rate of growth, 

 especially of the finger nails, for ex- 

 ample, in cases of gunshot wounds of 

 the great nerves of an arm, or of 

 paralysis of one half of the body. We 

 stained one or more corresponding 

 nails on both hands with nitric acid or 

 nitrate of silver. The new growth of 

 the nails would be free from stain and 

 would show the relative rate of growth 

 on the two hands at a glance. But the 

 growth of the nails is too slow to be a 

 satisfactory index of daily growth. On 

 the contrary, the hair, and especially 

 the beard, grow so ra])idly that in 

 twenty-four hours tlic stuMiv nut- 

 i^rowth of each hair is ]im'j: (■iinii'jli to 



lie easily >rri]. It gives one an imtifly 

 a|)|>carance. "Unshaven" is equivalent 

 to neglect of the proprieties, one might 

 almost say, of the decencies of life. As 

 I thought of it while my razor was rasp- 

 ing away the hair, I reflected that it in- 

 troduced me into "a world of billions." 



P)iit til is immediately brought to my 

 mind another instance of multiplied 

 billions, not the billions of cells in solid 

 suljstances like the hairs, but the bil- 

 lions of cells in that life-giving fluid — 

 the blood. 



As is Well known, the blood consists 

 of a liquid in which float the red blood 

 cells or blood "corpuscles." These are 

 round, disklike cells about Ysooo of an 

 inch in diameter. Besides these red 

 cells there are other cells called the 

 "white cells" or "leucocytes." These 

 number several thousand in a cubic 

 millimeter, but though of great im- 

 portance, physiologically and pathologi- 

 cally, we may disregard them in our 

 census of the blood cells. 



My friend, Prof. John C. Da Costa, 

 Jr., of the Jefferson Medical College, at 

 my request has furnished me with the 

 following estimates : 



The total amotmt of blood in a man 

 weighing 144 lbs. and in good health 

 is about 12 pints. The number of red 

 blood cells in each ctibe of blood meas- 

 uring only one millimeter (l-^r, of an 

 inch) on each side is about 5.000,000. 

 Sometimes this rises to 6,000,000, T,- 

 000.000, or even 8,000,000 in a cubic 

 millimeter. The number of red blood 

 cells in one pint is, therefore, on tln' 

 lowest basis, approximately ]n.-.M(i.- 

 iino.doo.doo. that is. ten thousand, two 

 liuiidi'(M| and roi'ty In'llions. 



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