Vol. XXIII. No. 9.] 



POPULAR SOIEN"CE NEWS. 



141 



IQedicirie aijd Pljarn^acy. 



RUDIMENTARY ORGANS. 



One of the strongest confirmations of the 

 Darwinian theory of descent is found in the 

 existence of rudimentary organs in animals, 

 which, while subsening no useful purpose, 

 still exist as an inheritance from some lower 

 form of life to which they were both useful 

 and necessary. 



One of the most familiar examples in the 

 human body is that of the nails. These 

 appendages are really of no particular use, 

 and render no sei-vice in the struggle for 

 existence. Artificial uses have been found 

 for them, it is true ; we could hardly open 

 our pen-knives without their aid, but this is a 

 case where their previous existence has sug- 

 gested a subsequent use. The nails suggested 

 the common type of knife-blade, but they 

 were certainly not developed through many 

 generations of knife-opening beings, with the 

 survival of those best fitted to open their 

 knives with promptness in case of trouble. 

 It is only when we look back among the 

 lower animals, and see how important a part 

 of their means of ofiense and defense the nails 

 become, that we realize that our digital 

 appendages are simply the useless degenerate 

 forms of those which, in some very remote 

 progenitor, were of the greatest importance 

 to his comfort and safety. 



The hair may be considered as another 

 worthless inheritance of ours, and the occa- 

 sional cases where it grows quite thickly 

 upon the body as a partial reversion to some 

 former type. It is a curious fact that it still 

 grows luxuriantly upon the head, where it is 

 of very little use, and its presence there is 

 hard to be explained, except by considering 

 it as an ornamental appendage, like the bril- 

 liant plumage of birds, thus bringing into 

 play the principle of sexual selection. The 

 fact that women rarely become bald adds 

 weight to this supposition. 



One of the most curious instances of a 

 rudimentary organ is to be found in the 

 cacufn, a portion of the intestines, which is 

 in shape like a small pouch, attached to the 

 alimentary canal. It subserves no use what- 

 ever in the human organism, and is, in fact, 

 a source of danger, for, although the opening 

 is closed by a wonderfully constructed valve, 

 yet fatal accidents have occurred from foreign 

 matters passing into it, and inducing inflam- 

 mation and abscesses. If we examine the 

 intestines of a herbivorous animal, such as an 

 ox, we find the same cajcum present, but 

 greatly enlarged, and usually filled with 

 partly digested food. In these animals it is 

 undoubtedly an important part of the diges- 

 tive apparatus, but only survives in man as a 

 useless and dangerous appendage. 



Certain valves in the veins of man are very 

 poorly adapted to support the blood pressure 



due to an upright position, and were proba- 

 bly first developed in some animal which 

 walked upon all four limbs, and it has re- 

 cently been discovered that the portal veins of 

 newly born infants contain rudimentary 

 valves, which soon disappear, but which are 

 always present in some of the lower animals 

 during their entire life. 



Rudimentary organs are found in other 

 animals as well as man. The clavicle, or 

 collar-bone, of the cat is a small bone, appar- 

 ently of little consequence, but in man it is a 

 most important means of maintaining an out- 

 ward position of the shoulder-joint, so as to 

 allow the widest range of motion to the limb. 

 The "jew-claws" which hang down from the 

 feet of deer, and the splint bones in a horse's 

 leg, are well-marked survivals ol a previously 

 useful member. 



The occasional occurrence of uncommon 

 organs in the human body may rather be con- 

 sidered as cases of reversion to former types, 

 than as direct survivals. The power possessed 

 by certain persons of moving the ears and 

 scalp, is an instance of this, as well as the 

 hairy men and women, and many other dime 

 museum "freaks." 



There are certain organs of which the use 

 is still unknown, such as the supra-renal cap- 

 sules or the prostate gland, which may or 

 may not be survivals. It is more probable 

 that they serve some unknown piu-pose in the 

 human economy, especially as when attacked 

 by disease they often produce severe constitu- 

 tional disturbance. 



The presence of rudimentary organs is, 

 however, a settled fact, and is a strong argu- 

 ment against the distinct? and separate origin 

 of the different forms of life. It is impossible 

 to think that the superflous and dangerous 

 caecum would have been introduced into the 

 human anatomy if man had come into exist- 

 ence independently of those forms in which it 

 is an important organ, and it is a belittling 

 conception of a Creator which regards him as 

 forming his special creations in weak imita- 

 tion of each other, and endowing them with 

 useless organs and members, without regard to 

 the varying conditions of their future environ- 

 ment. 



[Original in The Popular Science News.} 

 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF HANGING. 

 Of late much has been said and written against 

 hanging as a mode of execution, while comparatively 

 little has been offered in its favor, and, to all appear- 

 ances, the "electric chair" and other electrical de- 

 vices bid fair to supplant the time-worn and well- 

 tested gallows. But many who question the propriety 

 of hanging as a means ol' carrying out capital pun- 

 ishment, are entirely unacquainted with the physi- 

 ology of the act, and are tluis utterly unqualified to 

 dispute its practicability, since its humaneness and 

 admirable adaptation to the purpose which it sub- 

 serves cannot be fully revealed and understood 

 without a knowledge of the anatomy and physiology 

 of certain parts of the human body, and careful con- 

 sideration of the manner in which death is — or, at 



least, should be — produced when a criminal is thus 

 executed. 



It is an unfortunate fact that not all executions 

 are properly managed, and almost everyone has 

 met with accounts of hangings in which death 

 occurred only after minutes of apparently great 

 suffering, and it is true that, in some instances of 

 hanging, certain results combine to produce death 

 by a comparatively slow process. The compression 

 of the windpipe, the obstruction to the return of 

 venous blood from the head, and the flow of arterial 

 blood to this region, may produce death, but were 

 these the only factors entering into the causation of 

 death by hanging, we would, indeed, be scarcely 

 above the barbarous practices of the ancients, and 

 the public should be earnest in its demand for new 

 methods of execution. But these are not the desid- 

 erata, and when they do cause death, it is owing to 

 improper management or unavoidable occurrences. 

 When hanging is properly conducted, immediate 

 and probably painless death results from the break- 

 ing up of the respiratory nerve-centre. 



Respiration, like every other function of the body, 

 the discharge of which is necessary to life, is essen- 

 tially an involuntary act, but it is also to some 

 extent under the control of the will, and certain 

 voluntary respiratory acts, necessary to the economy 

 or conducive to its comfort, may be performed. 

 Thus speaking, singing, shouting, whistling, and 

 spitting are volitional movements, requiring special 

 voluntary efforts of expiration, often modified and 

 graduated in the most varied, yet exact, manner, 

 and supported by inspirations performed at stated 

 and suitable intervals. 



The respiratory movements and their rythfn, so 

 far as they are involuntary and independent of con- 

 sciousness, — as they are on all ordinary occasions, 

 — are governed by a special nerve-centre. The 

 location of this centre has been accurately deter- 

 mined by taking two animals, and in one cutting • 

 away the brain substance from above downwards, 

 and in the other making sections of the spinal cord 

 from below upward. Thus it is found that even in 

 a warm-blooded animal, all parts of the brain may 

 be gradually cut away from above down to the 

 medulla oblongata, and in another the spinal cord 

 may be detached below it, and in both cases respira- 

 tion continues for a short time ; while in the frog 

 both the brain and the spinal cord may be removed, 

 and respiration may be long sustained, provided 

 the medulla remain uninjured. On the other hand, 

 when a transverse section is made through the 

 medulla, respiration is instantly arrested and death 

 at once ensues ; moreover, this occurs when the 

 medulla alone is destroyed, all other parts remaining 

 intact. If the medulla be split by a "longitudinal 

 median section, the effect produced upon the respi- 

 ration of the animal will be hardly perceptible, 

 showing that the respiratory centre is bilateral, 

 or double, and that each part has power of separate 

 action. The respiratory centre, then, occupies a 

 very superficial portion of the posterior part of the 

 medulla oblongata, viz. : the floor ol the fourth ren- 

 tricle, extending from the tip of the calamus scripto- 

 rius to the stria acustica. It is the most important 

 nervous centre in the brain for the immediate pres- 

 ervation of the vital functions, and the only one 

 whose injury or removal is accompanied by a fatal 

 result. In man, quadrupeds, and birds, it is a vital 

 point, since in them the function of respiration over 

 which it presides is necessary for the continuance of 

 life from one moment to another. 



An easily performed experiment will verify the 

 above assertions and demonstrate the location of 

 the centre. Procure a cat, dog, or other warm- 

 blooded animal, and, having etherized it, make a 

 free incision through the skin covering the base of 



