Volume 1

Human physiology / by Robley Dunglison.

  • Robley Dunglison
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Human physiology / by Robley Dunglison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    arrive at any approximation. The dead bodies found in the arid sands of Arabia, as well as the dried preparations of the anatomical theatre, afford additional instances of reduction by desiccation. To a less ex- tent, we have the same thing exhibited in the excessive diminution in weight that occurs in disease, and occasionally in those who are ap- parently in health. Not many years ago, an Anatomie vivante was ex- hibited in London to the gaze of the curious and scientific, whose jveight was not more than eighty pounds. Yet the ordinary functions were carried on, apparently unmodified. In the year 1830, a still more wonderful phenomenon was shown. A man named Calvin Edson, forty-two years old, five feet two inches high, weighed but sixty pounds. His weight had formerly been one hundred and thirty-five pounds. For sixteen years previously, he had been gradually losing flesh, without any apparent disease, having enjoyed perfect health and appetite, and eating, drinking, and sleeping as well as any one. He was properly called the living skeleton^ It was stated in the public journals' that Dr. Edson, a brother of Calvin, was to all appearance entirely destitute of flesh. He was, in 1847, forty-two years old; of ordinary height—five feet six inches, and yet weighed only forty-nine pounjds. He retained all his faculties apparently in full vigour. We have it also, on the authority of Captain Eiley,^ that after protracted sufferings in Africa, he was reduced from two hundred and forty pounds to below ninety [?]. The fluids are variously contained; sometimes in vessels—as the blood and lymph; at others, in cavities—as the fluids secreted by the pleura, peritoneum, arachnoid coat of the brain, &c.: others are in minute areolae—as the fluid of the areolar membrane; whilst others, again, are intimately combined with the solid's. They differ likewise in density,—some existing in the state of halitus or vapour; others being very thin and aqueous—as the fluid of the serous membranes; and others of more consistence—as the secretion of the mucous mem- branes, animal oils, &c. The physical and chemical properties of the fluids will engage atten- tion when they fall individually under consideration; and we shall find that one of them at least—the blood—exhibits certain phenomena analogous to those of the living solid. The fluids have been difierently classed, according to the particular views that have, from time to time, prevailed in the schools. The an- cients referred them all to four—blood, bile, phlegm or pituita, and atrabilis; each of which was conceived to abound in one of the four ages, seasons, climates, or temperaments. Blood predominated in youth, in the spring, in cold, mountainous regions, and in the sanguine or inflammatory temperament. Pituita, or phlegm, had the mastery in old age, in winter, in low and moist countries, and in the lymphatic temperament. Bile predominated in mature age, in summer, in hot climates, and in the bilious temperament; and atrabilis was the cha- racteristic of middle age, of autumn, of equatorial climes, and of the melancholic temperament. This was their grand humoral system, ' Philadelphia Public Ledger, Feb. 2, 1847. ^ Narrative of the loss of the American Brig Commerce, &c., p. 302. New York, 1817.
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