Page images
PDF
EPUB

those of mastication. The stomach is simple, the intestinal canal of moderate length, and the large intestines well marked.

The vertebral column, or spine, is composed of thirty-two vertebræ, seven of which are denominated cervical, twelve dorsal, five lumbar, five sacral, and three coccygeal. Of the ribs, seven pairs are attached to the sternum, or breast bone, by cartilaginous productions, and are called true ribs. The other five pairs are called false ribs. The male of the human species seldom exceeds six feet in height; the female is generally a few inches less.

At his birth, the INFANT is exposed to a new element, the air. What the sensations are on the admission of this element into the lungs, it is impossible to guess; but from the cries of the infant, we may conjecture that it is attended with pain. The eyes of an infant are indeed open, but they are dull, and appear to be unfitted for the performance of any office whatever ; and their outward coat is wrinkled. The same reasoning will apply to most of the other senses. It is not till after forty days that it begins to smile; nor is it till then that it begins to weep: its former sensations of pain are unaccompanied with tears. The length of an infant, at birth, is twenty-one inches, though some do not exceed fourteen; and it generally weighs eight, and sometimes fourteen pounds. The form of the body and limbs of a new-born infant, are by no means perfect. Formerly, infants as soon as born, were injudiciously and unnaturally laced with bandages; so that they were not able to move a single joint. Nations which we call barbarous, act more rationally and more humanely in this respect. The Siamese, the Indians, the Japanese, the negroes, the savages of America, lay their infants naked in hanging beds of cotton, or in cradles lined with fur.

The eyes of children always seek the light, and if only one eye be directed to it, the other will probably become weak; both eyes ought, therefore, to be equally shaded or equally exposed. Squinting is commonly the effect of injudicious treatment in this respect.

In teething, the cutting of the first set generally commences about the sixth or seventh month, and ends between the second and third year. The order of cutting is generally as follows:-First, the two middle incisors, or cutting teeth of the lower jaw; then, after an interval of three or four weeks, the upper corresponding incisors follow. The two canine, or stomach teeth below, one on each side, next declare themselves; and these are followed by the eye teeth, in the upper jaw. Soon after, the two first molars, or grinders, one on each side, succeed to the canine, in the lower jaw; those above them follow. After the lapse of from four to six years, four more grinders are added in each jaw; these are permanent. At the age of puberty or later, the dentes sapientiæ, or wisdom teeth appear.

The hair of most infants is exceedingly light, almost white. The body, during infancy, is said (perhaps erroneously) to be less sensible of cold than

during any other season of life. The pulse is certainly strong, and it is therefore fair to conclude, that the internal heat is considerable. Till the age of three years, the life of infants is extremely precarious; in the course of the ensuing second and third years, it becomes more certain, and at six or seven, a child has a greater probability of living than at any other period of life. It is remarked, that of a certain number of children born at the same time, above a fourth die in the first year, above a third in two years, and at least one half in three years. By other calculations, it appears that one half of the children born at the same time, are not extinct in less than seven or eight years.

At twelve or fifteen months, infants begin to lisp. The broad sound of A, is the first sound which they articulate with most ease. Of the consonants, B, M, P, T, are most easy. In every language, therefore, baba, mama, papa, are the first words that children learn. Some children pronounce distinctly in two years, though the generality do not talk for two years and a half, and frequently not so early.

Some persons cease growing at fourteen or fifteen, while others continue their growth to twenty-two or twenty-three. In men, the body attains its perfect proportion at the age of thirty, and in women sooner. The persons of women are, indeed, generally complete at twenty. The distance between the eyes is less in man than in any other animal; in some creatures, in fact, the eyes are at so great a distance, that it is impossible they should ever view the same object with both eyes at once, Men and apes are the only animals that have eyelashes on the lower eyelid. Other animals have them on the upper, but want them on the lower lid. The upper lid rises and falls, the lower has scarcely any motion.

The ancients erroneously considered the hair as a kind of excretion, and believed that, like the nails, it increased by the lower part putting out the extremity; but the moderns have discovered that every hair is a tube, which fills and receives nutriment, like the other parts of the body. The roots, they observe, do not turn gray sooner than the extremities, but the whole changes color at once. Instances have been known, of persons who have grown gray in one night.

There is little known exactly with regard to the proportions of the human figure; and the beauty of the best statues is better conceived by observation than by measurement. Some, who have studied after the ancient masters, divide the body into ten times the length of the face, and others into eight. They tell us that there is a similitude of proportion in different parts of the body thus, that the hand is the length of the face; that the thumb is the length of the nose; that the space between the eyes is the breadth of the eye; that the breadth of the thickest part of the thigh is double that of the thickest part of the leg, and treble the smallest; that the arms extended are as long as the figure is high.

:

The strength of man is very considerable, when matured by practice. We are assured that the porters of Constantinople carry burthens of not less weight than nine hundred pounds; and Mr Desaguliers tells us of a man, who by distributing a certain number of weights, in such a manner that every part of his body bore its share, was able to support a weight of two thousand pounds, in an upright posture.

The strength of a man may be still farther estimated by the continuance of his labor, and by the agility of his motions. Men who are exercised in running, outstrip horses, or at least continue their speed for a greater length of time. In a journey, also, a man will walk down a horse; and after they have proceeded together for several days, the horse will be quite tired, and the man will be as fresh as at the beginning. The royal messengers of Ispahan, who are runners by profession, go thirty-six leagues in fourteen or fifteen hours. Travellers assure us that the Hottentots outrun lions in the chase; and that the savages who hunt the elk, pursue with such speed this animal, which is as fleet as a stag, that they at last tire it down and take it.

When the constitution of the body is sound, it is probably possible, by moderation in the passions, temperance, and sobriety, to lengthen out the period of LIFE for a few years. But even of this there seems an uncertainty. Men no doubt there are, who have passed the usual period of human existence; and, not to mention Parr, who lived to the age of one hundred and fifty-two, and Jenkins, to that of one hundred and sixty-nine, as recorded in the Philosophical Transactions, we have many instances of the prolongation of life to one hundred and ten, and even to one hundred and twenty years. Yet this longevity was occasioned by no peculiar art or management. On the contrary, it appears that the generality of such long livers were peasants, accustomed to the greatest fatigues, huntsmen, or laborers; men, in fact, who had employed their whole bodily strength, and even abused it, if to abuse it be possible, otherwise than by continual idleness and debauchery.

If, in the duration of life, there is any difference to be found, it ought seemingly to be ascribed to the quality of the air. In elevated situations, it has been observed, there are commonly found more old people than in such as are low. The mountains of Scotland and Wales, of Auvergne and Switzerland, have furnished more instances of extreme longevity, than the plains of Holland or Flanders, of Germany or Poland. In general, however, the period of human existence may be said to be the same in every country. If not cut off by accidental diseases, man is found to live to the years of ninety or a hundred. Beyond that date our ancestors did not live; nor has it in any degree varied since the time of David.

From a careful inspection of the registers of burials, in a certain number of country parishes in France, compared with the mortality of Paris, the following table has been made out, of the probable duration of human life.

TABLE OF THE PROBABILITIES OF THE DURATION OF LIFE.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][subsumed][subsumed]

By this Table it appears, that it is reasonably to be expected, or, in other words, that we may lay an even wager, that an infant newly born, will live eight years longer; that an infant of one year, will live thirty-three years longer; that an infant of two years, will live thirty-eight years longer; that a man of twenty, will live thirty-three years and five months longer; that a man of thirty, will live twenty-eight years longer; and so proportionally of every other age.

Ideas of external things are conveyed to the soul of man by means of the five SENSES for seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling. The organs through which the senses act are the nerves, which are small thread-like fibres, distributed all over the body, and all of them connected with the brain. The eyes seem to be formed very early in the human embryo. In the chicken, also, of all the parts that are double, these are the soonest produced; and it is observed from the eggs of several sorts of birds, as well as from those of lizards, that the eyes are much larger and more early in their

expansion than any other parts of the two-fold growth. Though in viviparous animals, and particularly in man, they are, at first, by no means so large in proportion as in the oviparous classes, yet they obtain their due formation sooner than any other parts of the body. Thus it is also with the organ of hearing. The little bones that help to compose the internal parts of the ear, are entirely formed, before any of the other bones have acquired any part of their growth and solidity. Hence it is evident, that those parts of the body which are furnished with the greatest quantity of nerves, are those which appear the soonest, and which are the soonest brought to perfection.

Mr Cheselden having couched for a cataract a boy of thirteen years of age, who had been blind from his birth, and having thus communicated to him the sense of sight, was at great pains to mark the progress of his visual powers. This youth, though hitherto incapable of seeing, was not, however, absolutely and entirely blind. Like every other person whose vision is obstructed by a cataract, he could distinguish day from night, and even black from white, or either of them from the vivid color of scarlet. Of the form of bodies, however, he saw nothing; nor of colors themselves, unless the light was strong. At first, the operation was performed only upon one of his eyes; and when he saw for the first time, so far was he from forming the smallest conception of distances, that he supposed, (as he himself expressed it,) that every thing he saw touched his eyes, in the same manner as every thing he felt touched his skin. The objects that pleased him most were those of which the surfaces were plane, and the figures regular; though as yet he could in no degree judge of their different forms, or assign a reason why some were more agreeable to him than others. The ideas he had entertained of colors during his former dark state, were so imperfect, that when he saw the in reality, he could hardly be persuaded they were the same. When such objects were shown him as he had been formerly familiar with by the touch, he observed them with earnestness, in order to distinguish them a second time. As of these, however, he had too many to retain all at once, the greates number were forgotten; and for one thing which he knew, after seeing it, there were a thousand things, according to his own declaration, of which he no longer possessed the smallest remembrance. He was very much surprised to find that those persons and those things which he had loved best, were not the most pleasing to the eye; nor could he help testifying his disappointment in finding his parents less handsome than he had conceived them to be. Before he could distinguish that a picture resembled a solid body, about two months elapsed. Till then, he only considered it as a surface, diversified by a variety of colors: but when he began to perceive that these shadings actually represented human beings, he also began to examine by the touch, whether they had not the usual qualities of such bodies; and great was his surprise to find smooth and even, what he had supposed a very unequal surface. He was

[graphic]
« PreviousContinue »