A CHAPTER OF WONDERS AND SOME VALUABLE QUESTIONS.
Wonders on the Increase--What Is Life?--How Is Action
Produced--Acquaint Yourself With the Machinery--Duty of the
Osteopath--Formation of Sacrum--The Pelvis--Appearance of
OEdema--Do All Diseases Have Appearance in OEdema.
WONDERS ON THE INCREASE.
Wonders are daily callers, and seem greatly on the increase during the
Eighteenth century. As we read history we learn that no one hundred
years of the past has produced wonders in such number and variety.
Stupid systems of government have given place to better and wiser.
Voyages of the ocean have had months by sail reduced to days by steam.
Journeys over land that would require six months by horse and ox, are
now accomplished in six days by rail. Our law, medical and other schools
of five and seven years, are now but two or three; and the graduates of
such schools are far superior in useful knowledge to those of the five
and seven. And no wonder at that, for the facilities for giving the
pupil an education are so far superior that the knowledge sought, can be
obtained in less time. Our schools are not intended to use the greatest
number of days that are allotted to man. But at this day schooling and
learning mean, to obtain useful knowledge in the quickest way that a
thoroughness can be obtained. If there is any method by which arithmetic
can be taught so as to master it in thirty days instead of thirty months
let us have it. We want knowledge, we are willing to pay for it, we want
all we pay for, and we want our heads kept out of the sausage-mill of
time wasting.
A great question now stands before us: What are the possibilities of
mind to improve our methods of gaining knowledge, shorten time, and
getting greater and better results? I am free to say the question is too
momentous to form an answer, as each day brings a new wonder, to the man
or woman who reasons on cause, and gives demonstrations by effects.
WHAT IS LIFE?
The philosopher who first asked that question no one knows. But all
intelligent persons are interested in the solution of this problem, at
least to know some tangible reason why it is called life; whether life
is personal or so arranged that it might be called an individualized
principle of nature.
I wish to think for a time on this line, because we should make a wise
handling of the machinery of the body.
If life in man has been formed to suit the size and duties of the being;
if life has a living and separate personage, then we should be governed
by such reasons as would give it the greatest chance to go on with its
labors in the bodies of man and beast.
We know by experience that a spark of fire will start the principles of
powder into motion, which, were it not stimulated by the positive
principle of father nature, which finds this germ lying quietly in the
womb of space, would be silently inactive for all ages, without being
able to move or help itself, save for the motor principle of life given
by the father of all motion.
HOW IS ACTION PRODUCED.
Right here we could and should ask the question: Is this action produced
by electricity put in motion, or is it the active principle that comes
as a spiritual man? If so, it is useless to try, or hope to know what
life is in its minutia. But we do know that life can only display its
natural forces by the visible action of the forms it produces.
If we inspect man as a machine, we find a complete building, a machine
that courts inspection and criticism. It demands a full exploration of
all its parts with their uses. Then the mind is asked to see or find the
connection between the physical, and the spiritual. By nature you can
reason on the roads that the powers of life are arranged to suit its
system of motion.
If life is an individualized personage, as we might express that
mysterious something, and it must have definite arrangements by which it
can be united and act with matter; then we are admonished to acquaint
ourselves with the arrangements of those natural connections, the one or
many, as they are connected to all parts of the completed being.
As motion is the first and only evidence of life, by this thought we are
conducted to the machinery through which life works to accomplish these
results.
ACQUAINT YOURSELF WITH THE MACHINERY.
If the brain be that division in which force is generated or stored, you
must at all hazards acquaint yourself with that structure of this
machine; trace the connection from brain to heart, from heart to lungs,
and other organs that can be acted upon by the brain, whose duty may be
to construct the fleshy and bony parts of the body. Trace from the brain
to the chemical laboratories, and note their action as they unite and
prepare blood and other fluids, that are used in the economy of this
vital, self-constructing and self-moving wonder, commonly known as man;
wherein life and matter do unite, and express their friendly relation
one with the other; and while this relation exists we have the living
man only, expressing and proving the relation that can exist between
life and matter, from the lowest living atom, to the greatest worlds.
They can only express form and action by this law. Harmony only dwells
where obstructions do not exist.
DUTY OF THE OSTEOPATH.
The Osteopath finds here the field in which he can dwell forever. His
duties as a philosopher admonish him, that life and matter can be
united, and that union cannot continue with any hindrance to the free
and absolute motion. Therefore his duty is to keep away from the track
all that will hinder the complete passage of the forces of the nervous
system, that by that power the blood may be delivered and adjusted, to
keep the system in normal condition. Here is your duty; do it well, if
you wish to succeed.
FORMATION OF SACRUM.
We believe only when we do not know. Belief and doubt are equal terms.
If we believe the sacrum is formed by a local system, then we can or
will have cause to believe that the rectum and colon appear after the
outer skin is in process of forming. For want of the truths we are left
in speculative doubt. I believe the lower bowels are formed by local
machinery that receives and appropriates to the purpose of construction
of such parts or organs as nature designs to be used there. If we
dissect a chicken as soon as hatched we will find the colon beginning at
rectum and complete in form, but not connected to the small intestines.
THE PELVIS.
To get more directly at the point I want to make I will say I have some
reasons to believe that the lower bowels are builded from rectum to the
vermiform appendix, by acts of pelvis. It may be well to state that I
have seen formation of rectum and colon in the chicken, before the small
intestines were visible at all. Then in same chicken I saw, liver, lung,
crop and gizzard, and only one artery in the region of the small
intestines. From this I was led to believe that the pelvis did much of
the forming of the viscera. If so, then we could look for much relief
through the system of the pelvis.
APPEARANCE OF OEDEMA.
OEdema is the one word that appears to be at the first showing of life
and death in animal forms. Previous to death by general swelling of
system, a watery swelling of fascia and lymphatics, even to those of
nerve fibers. If a disease should destroy life by withholding all
fluids, we can trace such cause in the beginning to a time when there
was watery swelling of the centers of nerves of nutrition, to such
amount as to cut off nerve supply until sensation ceased to renovate and
keep off accumulating fluids so long that fermentation did the work of
heating till all fluids had dried up, and the channels of supply closed
by adhesive inflammation, and death follows by the law of general
atrophy.
DO ALL DISEASES HAVE BEGINNING IN OEDEMA?
To assert that all diseases have their beginning in oedema may be wide
in range, but we often find one principle to rule over much territory.
"Instance:" Mind is the supreme ruler of all beings, from the mites of
life to the monsters of the land and sea. Thus we see a ruling principle
is without limit. The same of numbers. By heat all metals melt to
fluidity; acids must have oxygen to begin as solvents in most metals. We
only speak imperfectly of some common laws to prepare the student to
think on the line of probabilities as I hold them out for consideration.
Suppose we begin at the atoms of fluids such as enter to construct
animal or vegetable forms, and pen up till decomposition begins. By
such delay does not nature call a halt and refuse to obey the laws of
construction and let all other supplies pile up even to death? Is not
all this the result of oedema? OEdema surely begins with the first
tardy atom of matter.
Pneumonia begins by its oedematous accumulations of dead atoms, even
to the death of the whole body, all having found a start in atoms only.
QUESTIONS FOR THE OSTEOPATH.
We will close this chapter by propounding a few questions which the
Osteopath should keep in mind.
Are the human and animal forms complete as working machines?
Has nature furnished man with powers to make his bones; give them the
needed shapes of durable material, strong in kind?
Does a section in nature's law provide fastenings to hold these to one
another?
Then another question arises: How will this body move, and where and how
is the force applied?
Where and how is this force obtained?
How is it generated and supplied to these parts of motion?
What makes these muscles, ligaments, nerves, veins, arteries?
Are they self-forming, or has nature prepared machinery to make them?
Does animal life contain knowledge and force to construct all of the
parts of man?
Can it run the machine after it has finished it?
By what power does it move?
Is there a blood vessel running to all parts of this body to supply all
these demands?
If it has a battery of force, where is it?
What does it use for force?
Is it electricity? If so how does it collect and use this substance?
How does it convey its powers to any or all places?
How does the man keep warm without fire?
How does he build and lose flesh all the time?
Where and how is the supply made and delivered to proper places?
How is it applied and what holds it to its place when adjusted?
What makes it build the house of life?
Do demand and supply govern the work? If not, what does?
Are the laws of animal life sufficient to do all this work of building
and repairing wastes and keep it in running condition?
If it does, what can man do or suggest to help it?
Is this machine capable of being run fast or slow if need be?
Does man have in him some kind of chemical laboratory that can turn out
such products as he needs to fill all his physical demands?
If by heat, exercise, or any other cause he gets warm, can that
chemistry cool him to normal?
If too cold can it warm him? Can it adjust him to heat and cold?
If so, how is it done? Is the law of life and longevity fully vindicated
in man's make up?