The romance of the human body / by Ronald Campbell Macfie.

  • Ronald Campbell Macfie
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The romance of the human body / by Ronald Campbell Macfie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stage in the shape of a small pit in the neck, or of small tag’s of skin. Again, the double hare-lip which is found in some adults ought properly to be called a shark-lip, since it occurs normally in sharks, and is probably a relic of the shark stage through which man is supposed to have passed in his evolutionary ascent. Cleft palate, again, is a reptilian condition, and serves to record man’s descent from a reptile. Other instances of un - fortunate historical records might be noted. At least, this is the interpretation put upon them by orthodox science. At one time, it was thought that a miniature man existed in the ovum, and that development was merely a matter of growth; that, in fact, Topsy’s explanation of her development — that God made her so long and she growed the rest—was a right description of the process. We know now that that is not the case. There is no miniature man in the ovum, only, at most, microscopic particles representative of his various parts and organs; and these are not even arranged as they are finally arranged in the body. We shall not attempt here to give any detailed account of the growth of the body; but day by day, week by week, development goes on, and in the end we have a man—a tremendous colony of billions of cells, most of them alive, but a few, like some of the cells of nails and hairs, practically dead. Over the surface of the body are the layers of cells known as the skin, in the jelly of the eyeball are branching cells, in the brain and spinal cord are millions more, the liver contains countless thousands of them, the muscles are simply long
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