THE ORGANISM OF MAN

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 20, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 16.

THE ORGANISM OF MAN.

IN the human body there are about 263 bones.

The muscles are about 500 in number.

The length of the alimentary canal is about thirty-two feet.

The amount of blood in an adult averages thirty pounds, or fully one-fifth of the entire weight.

The heart is six inches in length and four inches in diameter, and beats seventy times per minute, 4,200 times per hour, 100,800 per day, 36,792,000 times per year, 2,565,440,000 in threescore and ten, and at each beat 2½ ounces of blood are thrown out of it, 175 ounces per minute, 656 pounds per hour, 7½ tons per day. All the blood in the body passes through the heart in three minutes. This little organ, by its ceaseless industry, pumps each day what is equal to lifting 122 tons one foot high, or one ton 122 feet high.

The lungs will contain about one gallon of air, at their usual degree of inflation. We breathe on an average 1,200 times per hour, inhale 600 gallons of air, or 24,000 per day. The aggregate surface of the air cells of the lungs exceeds 20,000 square inches, an area very nearly equal to the floor of a room twelve feet square.

The average weight of the brain of an adult male is three pounds and eight ounces, of a female two pounds and four ounces. The nerves are all connected with it, directly or by the spinal marrow. These nerves, together with their branches and minute ramifications, probably exceed 10,000,000 in number, forming a "body guard" outnumbering by far the greatest army ever marshaled.

The skin is composed of three layers, and varies from ¼ to ⅛ of an inch in thickness. The atmospheric pressure being about 14 pounds to the square inch, a person of medium size is subjected to a pressure of 40,000 pounds. Each square inch of skin contains 3,500 sweating tubes, or perspiratory pores, each of which may be likened to a little drain pipe ¼ of an inch long, making an aggregate length of the entire surface of the body of 201,166 feet, or a tile ditch for draining the body almost forty miles long.

Man is marvelously made. Who is eager to investigate the curious and wonderful works of Omnipotent wisdom, let him not wander the wide world around to seek them, but examine himself.—Medical Brief.