History of the human body / by Harris Hawthorne Wilder.

  • Harris Hawthorne Wilder
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the human body / by Harris Hawthorne Wilder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/620 (page 12)
    The adaptations of the soma are extremely gradual, and thus, if all forms that have ever existed could be arranged in order, they would form a continuous series, not in the form of a straight line, but in that of a profusely branching tree, since from one parent form two or more varieties are constantly arising, capable of inhabiting a slightly different environment, and, if successful, continuing along separate lines of develop¬ ment. As a matter of fact, however, the fauna and flora of the world at present represent, for the most part, but isolated units in the great system, and while a careful study of the structure of every known form has led to the restoration of many portions of this tree, there are in other places great gaps filled thus far only by inferences, and therefore matters of continual controversy. This continuity of all life and the recognition of animals and plants as no more than the countless adaptive forms of the plastic soma, enable the zoologist to trace out with con¬ siderable accuracy the history of those series of which the records are the best preserved, a history which, while lying in the past, is represented in the present by forms which arose in earlier periods, the complete adaptation of which has allowed them to successfully struggle with their competitors and thus to survive with but little change to the present day. It is in this sense, then, that there can be a history of the human body, the history of the struggles and successes and failures of our remote ancestors, as they successively encountered the various environments wherein this history has been enacted. The ocean, the marsh, the prairie, the forest, each has formed the complex stage-setting of an historic period and has contributed to the formation of the human soma. Man’s body was, like all others, not made new, but adapted, and this not once, but repeatedly. Old organs have been readapted to new uses or are retained as merely functionless rudiments, new organs have arisen through the change of function of some preexisting part, the body has in all its details been molded and shaped with each new change to the end of producing the highest degree of physiological efficiency, and this always with sole