conscience? calm the flutterings of the parting soul? smooth the dying pillow? Who can guide and cheer the burdened spirit, in its lone journey through the dark valley of the shadow of death? Who can snatch its victim from the grave; and thus rob it of its partial and short-lived victory? Who can stay the soul "In that great and awful day, When heaven and earth shall pass away :" when the sun shall be darkened; and the moon shall withdraw her shining; and the stars shall fall from heaven; and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: when the elements shall melt with fervent heat; and the earth shall be burnt up and dissolved: and, at the voice of the Archangel and the trump of God, the graves shall give up their dead; and the nameless and numberless myriads, which, like the stars of heaven in multitude, or the sand upon the sea-shore innumerable, have peopled earth's many mansions; flitted, obscure and unnoticed, through the short scene of life, and then vanished into oblivion,—when all these, willing or unwilling, shall throng together to a strict, a separate, and a conspicuous judgment; where of every idle word man must give an account; and where the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed? Surely, in that awful day, it is "Christ crucified" alone who can nerve the soul with holy confidence in its offended but reconciled God: and thus enable it to view with uplifted head, and unshrinking eye, and unfailing heart, the solemnities of his judg ment. Nor does his work terminate even here. It is "Christ crucified" in whom " are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge:" of holiliness, happiness, and love: and who will minister to the glorified spirit, in the realms above, materials of enjoyment, rich in abundance, exquisite in nature, and infinite in variety; when the treasures of this lower world have utterly failed us; when this earth, with all that it inherits, has passed away for ever; "and like the baseless fabric of a vision left not a rack behind." Then, the assimilating efficacy of His presence will consummate the beatific vision in its transforming effects, since then "we shall be like Him, for we shall see him as He is." Thus will He, at once, centre and satisfy the profoundest affections, the most ardent and elevated aspirations of the soul, when faith has been lost in sight, and hope in present enjoyment: when the dim and fleeting shadows which, in this twilight of time, mock the anxious grasp; and tantalize the soul thirsting for a full draught of enjoyment, have cleared off: and when those treacherous meteors which earth's native resources have lit up, and which lure but to destruction, have vanished away, before the pure and enlivening beams of the fully-risen and unsetting Sun of eternity. J. M. H. CURSORY PHYSIOLOGICAL NOTICES. [The following paper is rather out of our usual course of topics, but it may interest many of our readers. We are not sure of all our correspondent's facts and inferences; but as our Journal is not devoted to scientific researches, it is not necessary for us to offer any opinion upon those in which we differ from him. We presume that he intends his paper as a practical commentary upon the declarations of the inspired Psalmist, in Psalm cxxxix., upon the human frame so fearfully and wonderfully made.] To the Editor of the Christian Observer. WITH your kind permission, I wish to offer to your readers a Paper on the structure of the human frame, the system of pathology, and the development of the mind, (though very imperfectly able myself to do justice to the subject,) so far as they may be considered to affect and be applicable to the religious character, of which in different individuals we perceive sometimes such complexity of The principle of life variation amidst a general definition of unity. has given rise to numerous theories, while, after all the researches of science, we remain nearly as much in the dark as before in regard to its cause; I mean of course its proximate or secondary cause, or causes, the originating cause being the volition and creative energy of the Almighty. 66 1. From the divine prohibition given to Noah after the flood, "but flesh, with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat," (Gen. ix. 4); from the Mosaic ordinance of a like import, "whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of blood, that soul shall be cut off from his people," (Lev. vii. 27); and also from the apostolic from things strangled command in the New Testament, of abstinence and from blood," (Acts xv. 20), arose probably the notion that this principle resided in that fluid. This doctrine appears to have been πορφύρεος θανατος,” held by the ancients; for we read in Homer, of " Since the time of Hippocrates, and in Virgil "purpurea anima.” the first person who made any valuable discoveries, in respect to the circulation of the blood, was our countryman Harvey; and since, the eminent surgeon John Hunter. 2. Another hypothesis, which was believed by Aristotle, is that life proceeds from the harmony of the human organs; but this will not be so self-evident, if we reflect that this statement is not always and altogether equally true in fact; for some parts of the body are more necessary to the health of the whole than others; that sometimes the mind, which is the main-spring of the animal machine, is diseased, when the bodily organs are in the main sound, though the latter, in process of time, may become affected by the former; and again, some corporeal organs may be seriously impaired, when the mental unity and vigour continue healthy, though there may be a re-action of the one upon the other. Neither from this supposition, if it were tenable, could we arrive at the first moving cause or principle. 3. Another theory is, that life is derived from some attenuated gas or air; which seems to have been the opinion of Lucretius, "Nam penitus prorsum latet hæc natura, subestque; Of the blood it may be observed, that it possesses the qualities of contractibility and irritability; it has the property of maintaining the equality of its own temperature in all atmospheric degrees of heat and cold-of preserving its vital power when organization, as for example by the effect of paralysis, has lost it; but, like muscular fibre, is exhausted of it by the application of some powerful stimulus, as in the instance of death occasioned by a stroke of lightning. There is found in the blood, sulphur, iron, and a red colouring matter, more vivid when returned from the lungs, which has not been satisfactorily accounted for by the most experienced chemists-by Davy, Berzelius, Brande, whether owing to caloric, oxygen, or carbon. In an adult, the weight of whose blood may be calculated at twenty-eight pounds, the proportion of iron has been estimated to be about three ounces; and that contained therefore in the blood of forty men, by its reduction to a metallic state, would be sufficient to make a ploughshare. These and other constituents of the animal blood are universally proportionable to the ages and habits of the subjects, whatever may be the soil in which they live, and whether those mineral substances abound in that country or not. In the Philosophical Transactions, and elsewhere, instances are recorded of spontaneous combustion in persons addicted to excessive spirituous liquors, and whose bodies were ascertained to have been converted in parts into an oily and sooty matter. I remember a few years ago reading an account in the newspapers, of a Romish priest in some French provincial town, whose body in this manner was consumed, and a phosphoric flame was emitted from it after death. Nor is this so marvellous, if we only reflect that the composition of the human body is itself combustible; that the usual heat of the blood, in an ordinary subject, is 98° of Fahrenheit, which may be increased to 103° or 104° by inflammation; and that when a hay-stack or manure-heap takes fire, the thermometer is only about 81°. Both fluids and solids enter necessarily into the composition of the body. Corpses inhumed beneath the sands of Egypt or Arabia, and afterwards dug up, have been discovered to be as hard and dry as a mummy; and as capable of preservation, as if the strongest antiseptics had been used to prevent putrefaction, and they had been embalmed in gums and spices; for the intense heat having drawn the fluids to the cuticle, they have been imbibed by, or evaporated from, the surrounding sands. On the other hand, on opening the "Fosses communes," in the burial-ground of the Innocens in Paris, in the year 1786 and 1787, with a view to erect some new buildings, it was noticed, to the surprise and alarm of the neighbourhood, that the elementary particles of flesh and fibres had been changed into a species of wax or fat, called adipocere. M. Fourcroy, the chemist, being consulted, explained the phenomenon by the circumstance of the coffins having been so closely placed one upon another, that the oxygen of the atmosphere had been almost entirely excluded, and portions of the gasses having gradually escaped, the carbon and hydrogen had formed the residuum. The corpse of Count Pollen, wrecked some years ago upon the Baltic coast, was cast on shore six months afterwards, having the face and features so wholly uninjured; that they were immediately recognized, in conse quence of its having been entangled probably in the sea-weeds, and therefore prevented from coming in contact with the air. Horn, hair, beard, nails, and the exterior integuments, are independent of other parts of the body; so that they exist, and even grow, after death; and these are possessed of little or no sensation; wherefore we may infer that some of the inferior orders of creation, whose parts are composed of similar materials, and myriads of which, though some times so minute as to be imperceptible to the naked eye, people the air and water, suffer from destruction and death little or no pain at all. Whatever may be the external stimuli upon the sensitive organs and finer nerves, the moving powers of the human body ordinarily are the muscles. A common porter exerts, on an average, a force which can raise ten pounds weight ten feet high every second for ten hours each day; a porter who walks three miles an hour, can sustain a horizontal weight of 200 pounds; and the chairman, who walks four miles an hour, can carry 150 pounds. Turkish porters have been known to bear 700 or 900 pounds, walking slower, and shorter distances. The daily labour of a horse equals that of five or six men upon a plane surface; but, from the horizontal shape of the animal, in draught, up an elevation, it does not amount to more than that of three or four men. In a windmill, twenty-five square feet of canvass are equal to the work of one man; and a mill, with the sails of full dimensions, working eight hours daily, would equal thirty-four men. A steam-engine, with a cylinder of 30 inches, is of 40-horse power; but working unintermittingly, it equals 120 horses, or 600 men; every square inch of the piston being equal to a labourer. A carpenter, named Topham, is related to have lifted 800 pounds. He could roll or double a stout pewter dish; bend a poker three inches in circumference, to a right angle, by striking it on his left arm, or twist and untwist it round his neck; and burst a rope two inches in circumference. I witnessed once myself, Belzoni, the African traveller, lift a flat wooden table in his mouth, between his teeth, having another man standing upon it. Certain muscular actions with which man is gifted, become stiff for want of use; and of such, tumblers and mountebanks avail themselves, for the purpose of astonishing, by their feats, the vulgar: and among these the Indian jugglers might be particularized. In the cases however of several individuals, the same muscles, though apparently having an equal number of fibres, and being similar in thickness and length, are not always accompanied with the same power, in which respect the natural and the mechanical laws differ; and also in another, that the one increase in strength from use, provided they are not overstrained. The use of the hand has been defined by physiologists, as one of the most characteristic marks which distinguishes the superiority of man over the lower animals; and Sir Charles Bell has written one of the Bridgewater Treatises upon this organ and its functions. Between the cuticle and skin, or the uppermost and undermost of two layers and rows of a like substance, is included that mucous pigment, which occasions the varieties in colour of the human race; though God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." (Acts. xvii. 26.) The black complexion has been considered to be owing to the effect produced by the rays of the sun in attracting and detaching the oxygen from this pigment, the carbon of which, being liberated, is changed into a black dye. The children of negroes at their birth are invariably white, and the blackness is not formed and matured till at the expiration of some months. From a morbid condition of the secreting functions, it sometimes happens that this change does not take place at all; in which case the negro's head and features are discernible, but the skin retains its European whiteness; or from disease, CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 23. 4 0 the secretion of the membrane occurs with alternations of white and black, so that it presents a spotted and mottled appearance. A discolour of the skin in like manner, though from another cause, is produced by doses of nitrate of silver-lunar caustic. Climate influences the colour of the skin, as well as the human stature. Hence the deep-jet under the Equator; the brown and copper under the Tropics; the swarthy and olive, with varieties of fairness, from the Tropic of Cancer northwards. The tallest tribes inhabit the back of Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope; and the shortest are found in the coldest countries, and on the highest mountains, such as the Laplanders and the inhabitants of Nova Zembla, the Greenlanders and Esquimaux. The different kinds of food have also their relation and proportionate effect upon the animal frame in these respects, through the digestion of the stomach, and the biliary ducts of the liver. A paper laid before the Royal Society in 1813, gives an anecdote of a woman named Harriet French, whose left shoulder, arm, and hand were of the deepest black, while every other part of her body was of the whitest hue. That the stomach is the seat of local diseases, was the discovery of Abernethy; but, like every other human system, it is fallible. The operation and power of the gastric juice were strikingly shewn in the case of a man who died in one of the public hospitals of London, in whose body were lodged the digested handles and blunted blades of some clasp-knives, which he had sometime previously swallowed, perhaps for a wager. In the records of the Tower of London is an account of Cicily de Ridgeway, who, in the reign of Edward the Third, having been found guilty of murdering her husband, continued forty days without food or water. She received the royal pardon, because the fact was deemed miraculous. In the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1684, four men are mentioned to have lived upon water for twenty-four days, having been buried under a stratum of earth for that period. In the same Journal for 1742, is recorded the case of a young man, who, having been thrown into an inflammatory fever at sixteen or seventeen years of age, had such an antipathy to all food, that for eighteen years afterwards he subsisted upon water only. A crew wrecked on a small island have at last drunk the blood of sea-fowl. The lungs also perform an important part in the arrangement of the human functions. The respiration of air in a full-grown person amounts to 48,000 cubic inches in an hour, or 1,152,000 in a day, equal to about seventy nine hogsheads; and eleven ounces of carbon or charcoal are breathed from the lungs every twenty-four hours. It needs then be no matter of wonder in so complicated a structure as that of man, not only that it should be so frequently subjected to disorder, but that there should be hereditary affections, which are perpetuated, such as gout, consumption, scrofula, madness, and fatuity; since God represents himself as "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate him." (Ex. xx. 5.) Thus, among the Romans, the families of Plauti and Vari were noted for some natural defect. I may mention, likewise, the unfortunate races of the Albinos, a name given by the Portuguese to the white Moors; and also the Cretins of the Vallais. |