A WUL'LD OF BILLIONS 



709 



Remarkable Activity ix the World 

 OF Billions 



The number of these red blood cells 

 destroyed and renewed every day in the 

 ordinary activities of life cannot be ac- 

 curately estimated. But we can get an 

 approximate idea. 



No physical or menial process can 

 be accomplished without the destruc- 

 tion and regeneration of millions, or 

 more likely of billions, of these blood 

 cells in bringing oxygen from the lungs 

 to burn up waste tissue and to aid 

 in building up new cells and new tis- 

 sues. 



You lift an arm, you eat a meal, you 

 reason about anything — every one of 

 these actions means the using up of the 

 cells in the muscles of the arm, or of 

 the muscular cells of the walls of the 

 stomach, and the cells of the glands 

 producing gastric juice, or of the cells 

 of the brain. The blood is one of the 

 agents in effecting these various pro- 

 cesses, and billions upon billions of its 

 cells are used up every day. 



The loss of blood in accidents, 

 wounds, and operations must be made 

 up quickly in order to keep us in good 

 health. In an accident or in any se- 

 rious operation the loss of blood may 

 easily amount to a half tumblerful, a 

 tumblerful, or even more. A tumbler 

 holds six ounces. A loss of half a pint, 

 eight ounces, is not very uncommon. 

 In a serious accident, such as a shell 

 wound in France, attended with great 

 hemorrhage, the loss might amount to 

 as much as three pints— about one 

 fourth of the estimated total amount in 

 the body. Bierf reund estimates that such 

 a loss may be made good in four weeks. 

 In three pints of blood there would be 

 about 30,720,000,000,000, that is, 

 thirty thousand, seven hundred and 

 twenty billions of blood cells. In every 

 hour of the four weeks then there would 

 be a regeneration of more than 45,000,- 

 000,000 of cells, or more than 760,000^- 



'000 cells every minute, day and night, 

 for four weeks ! 



Not only are the blood cells destroyed 

 and regenerated at this enormous rate, 

 but all the tissue cells which make up 

 the muscles, the bones, the brain and 

 nerves, the liver, pancreas, spleen, kid- 

 neys, are being destroyed and regener- 

 ated day by day. 



Confessedly these figures are only ap- 

 proximate, but even if they are, the 

 impression of the enormous cellular ac- 

 tivity of the entire body is justified. Is 

 it not a wonder that the body does not 

 get tired of doing such hard and never 

 ceasing work ? 



But to return to the beard and the 

 growth of each hair, which introduced 

 us to the world of billions. The amount 

 of daily growth of the beard may vary 

 possibly from man to man, with health 

 and illness, with the seasons, with the 

 quantity and quality of the food, pos- 

 sibly from race to race, or with differ- 

 ent latitudes from the poles to the 

 equator. Even different parts of the 

 beard grow at different rates— toward 

 the margin of the beard near the eyes 

 the growth is less rapid than on the 

 cheeks and the upper lip. 



The number of hairs in the beard it 

 is impossible to count, but let us as- 

 sume that it would probably be say 

 5000 on an average face. Then we 

 must remember that the beard is only 

 a small portion of the hair on the hu- 

 man body. Besides the hair on the face 

 there are the hairs on the head, in the 

 eye-brows and eye-lashes, and finally 

 the fine lanugo or soft hairs which 

 overspread the entire body, growing to 

 groups of long hairs in the armpits and 

 other parts of the body, but disappear- 

 ing entirely on the palms of the hands 

 and the soles of the feet. With age, we 

 men at least, usually lose the hair on 

 the top of the head which becomes bald 

 over a smaller or larger area. On the 

 ears the hair often increases markedly 

 in length after middle life. Even in 

 women a mustache not uncommonlv 



