The first time we talked about the Blood, my dear little pupil, I
introduced him to you as the steward of your body, and what a steward
to be sure! Always awake, as you may remember, always in motion; his
pockets ever full of the materials unceasingly required by the
indefatigable builders of that human edifice in which it has pleased
God to house your dear little self. If you wish really to understand
what follows now, we must carry on the simile a little further.
A steward not only provides the workmen with materials, but gives them
orders as well, and this is part of the blood's business also. He is
not only commissary-general, but _whipper-in_ of the whole household,
and besides the care of giving out all the stores, has the charge to see
that everything is properly done. The unhappy men who purchase
prosperity at the dreadful cost of maintaining slavery, pretend that
their slaves would do no work worth looking at, were there not always
some one behind them with a whip in his hand. Well, our organs are
slaves, and slaves of the worst sort. They would never do anything
at all, if the blood were not everlastingly whipping them up in his
ceaseless rounds. Let him come to a stand-still for one minute, for
a second even, and everything stops short; then we are at once in the
castle of the Sleeping Beauty in the wood. But perhaps I cannot do
better than to compare our bodily machine to a violin--to hit upon
something less dismal than slaves--a violin with blood for its bow.
As long as the bow runs over the strings the violin makes music and
lives; when the bow stops, it is silent and dies.
You have never yet had a fainting fit, my dear child; it rarely happens
at your age. But you may possibly have seen somebody faint; or, at any
rate, you have heard it talked about. Do you know what takes place in
such cases? Now and then, in consequence of some violent emotion, but
how or why I cannot tell you, all the blood rushes suddenly back towards
the heart, as during an earthquake a river will sometimes flow back
towards its source, leaving its bed dry. Thereupon the face turns
white, as if to give notice that there is no longer anything red below
the skin. The organs, no longer stimulated by the blood, leave off
work altogether. The brain goes to sleep, the muscles relax,
consciousness ceases, and you behold the poor body, from which the
soul seems to have departed, give way on all sides, and fall to the
ground like a corpse. This is not exactly death, but it is yet an
interruption of life. It would be death if nature did not get the upper
hand again, and send back the deserter to his post.
I may remark here that it was partly on this account that some of the
ancients thought the soul was seated in the blood; not a bad idea for
people who were determined to pronounce where the soul was, when it
is so easy to say one knows nothing about it. But those who placed it
in the breath, and who have bequeathed to us those beautiful
expressions--_yielding up the last breath--giving up the ghost_--were
not wrong neither.
In point of fact the blood is not the soul of the body; in other words,
does not keep the body alive, otherwise than by keeping up unceasingly
and everywhere that magic fire of which we were talking last time.
The French people, in their picturesque language, have found an
expression, full of energy, to express the action exercised by the
master workman, who knows how to make his people work: "_Il vous met
le feu sous le ventre._" [Footnote: Literally, _he puts fire under
their bellies;_ but here signifying that he makes it so hot that
the organs are compelled to continue in motion.] This is, to the letter,
the process employed by the blood to make the organs work. It makes
a fire under the belly. Unhappily their work only lasts as long as the
fire which causes the heat, and which is so necessary to life that it
is almost confounded with it. It is the sacred fire of the Roman
Vestals, which must be fed night and day under pain of death should
it go out. Now, if to feed the sacred fire of life, it be necessary
that the blood should everywhere find hydrogen and carbon
_unattached_, that is to say, free and ready to unite themselves
to oxygen, it is no less necessary that he should bring oxygen with
him everywhere. Else there would be no marriage, and therefore no fire.
Oxygen is, then, the talisman which brings the organs to obedience.
Without oxygen he would be a slave-driver without his whip; his orders
would be despised. If the organs were to be deluged with _venous_
blood--with that black blood which has lost its oxygen, they would not
stir any more than if they had received so much water. They acknowledge
nothing but _arterial_ blood--red blood--blood rich in oxygen.
That is what they respect, and which has authority over them; the other
is a bankrupt who has lost his credit with his cash; those whom he fed
but lately now laugh in his face. And as our good steward spends all
his oxygen every time he goes his rounds, it would soon be over with
him, and, consequently, with us, too, if he had not some method of
replenishing his purse after each journey. Happily the lungs are the
inexhaustible chest to which he always returns to renew his right of
authority; that is, his power of preserving life. When it comes to the
_last sigh_, the last effort of the diaphragm by which the chest
is closed forever, we must bid adieu to life. In yielding up that, we
have in very truth yielded up the ghost.
This is no joke, as you see, and it would not do to be caught
unprepared, with an inexorable necessity hanging over one, which never
allows a moment's respite. The blood acts like a reasonable being,
therefore, in laying up his stores of combustible in reserve. Moreover,
whether he has done so or not, the fire must go on all the same; that
is absolutely necessary; and if he has no spare fat to feed it with,
when, from any cause, the stomach leaves off working, he makes use of
anything he can lay his hands upon.