-(5 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



elevated. The troubles are of a serious nature, if not promptly attended to. 

 That wonderful fluid, the blood, is an important factor for good or evil in the hu-. 

 man organization, and it is very sensitive to changes of temperature and to 

 disturbing agents. Everything that enters the stomach, or that passes into the 

 system through respiration or by abrasions of the skin, is urged forvi^ard into the 

 blood, and thus sent on its way, for weal or woe, to every part of the system. If 

 the fangs of a rattlesnake pierce through the skin at the extreme end of one of the 

 toes, the blood is there ready to receive the poison and hurry it on toward the 

 heart, which, as soon as reached, fahers in its action, and finally stops beating. 

 The sting of a wasp or hornet discharges into the blood a virus of much less po- 

 tency, which is taken up in the same way and carried toward the heart. Slight 

 constitutional effects, however, are experienced, and the poison expends itself in 

 local inflamation, which soon subsides. Quick poisons are for the most part sim- 

 ply powerful sedatives ; the action is to suspend heart pulsations, and the patient 

 dies from syncope. 



If we are brought into an atmosphere in which floats the germ of small-pox, 

 measles, scarlatina, diphtheria, etc., the germs pass into the air-cells of the lungs, 

 and, penetrating the cell-walls, reach the blood. The heart receives them, but is 

 not affected as by the virus of the rattlesnake; its direct action is not influenced, 

 and the pulsations simply drive the septic matter into the general circulation. 

 Here is the field for the exercise of its malign influence. One germinal particle, 

 by a process of "budding" (a property pecuHar to ferments), shortly becomes a 

 thousand, then millions, of particles, and the normal condition of the blood is se- 

 riously disturbed. Great heat is engendered, the tissues are oxidized or burned 

 with unusual rapidity, pustular eruptions form on the skin, which are but little 

 surface volcanoes for the escape of the poison. The effort of nature to expel 

 offending agents from the system is something wonderful. The struggle is en- 

 tirely independent of the will, for the will is usually passive in severe diseases. 

 If the system is capable of bearing up long enough under the disturbance, health 

 is again established, but if not the body dies. 



If we pour into the stomach substances foreign to its wants, substances which 

 resist the normal functions of digestion, like alcohoHc Uquids and a hundred oth- 

 er vile compounds, the stomach expels them from its domain as speedily as possi- 

 ble ; they are thrust out through the door which opens into the intestinal canal, 

 and here the absorbents take them in hand, pass them over into the blood, and 

 from thence they travel to all parts of the system. The stomach is the most abus- 

 ed organ inside of a human being, and fortunately has special powers conferred 

 upon it of withstanding abuse. It has also the capability of taking terrible re- 

 venge for violence and injustice done to it. The man himself, or the woman 

 herself, that is, the spirit, the intelligence, which temporarily resides in the physi- 

 cal structure, has no business to irritate and cripple the stomach, the most 

 important apartment of all in the house in which he or she lives. We usually 

 say, in speaking of the body, my body, or our oii.r bodies ; but do we own these 



