ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF BEING BIG.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1987, 7 May 1906, Page 7

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF BEING BIG.

As is well known athletes are | more liable to die of pneumonia than j people who are not highly developed | physically. The reason for this is j that in the case of athletes the i breathing capacity of the limps has j been greatly increased by athletic j exercises. Nearly the whole of the I available lung has been brought into j constant, daily use. All of the laj tent air cells have been developed, j and when acute disease attacks the ' lungs it has greater area over which ! to s| read, and the pneumonia is of j a most virulent and active type. I Another reason why athletes an* j not so liable to recover from ptienjtuonia is that they have no latent j lung to call into action after the ! disease begins. in the case of orj dinary men and women at. least onej third of the lung surface is in a lai lent or unused condition. When | disease sets in it attacks only the | active portion of the lungs. This j leaves the person with a little reI serve lung, which may he whipped into action after the disease has been developed. Not only do the inflammatory processes of pneumonia have less surface presented for their ravages, but there is latent lung which can come to the rescue of the patient ip Ike, later stages of the disease. WOMEN BEAR HUNGER BETTER THAN MEN. Something very similar to this is true in the case of robust people having typhoid fever. It is a very curious fact, not generally known, that the small intestine differs in length in different people. One authority gives the average length of the small intestine to be twenty feet, but anatomists who have given this subject special study have found the average in the adult male to be 22? f feet and in the adult female 2d 1.3 feet. In an analysis of 100 cases the shortest small intestine observed was 15J, feet and the longest 31 feet 10 inches, .a difference of over 15 feet. This surprising variability, when properly considered, is a very significant fact.- The small intestine is very important to digestion. It is here that the digested fluid of food is mainly absorbed for Iho purposes of life. As the dissolved fluid slowly moves along the tortuous canal, the nutritions portions are gradually absorbed by the blood vessels of the | mucous lining. It is very easy, to see that the length of the tube lias an important, bearing upon the absorption. Other things being equal the longer the tube the more perfect the absorption will be. A tube 30 feet long, folded and twisted upon itself, would present more than double the obstruction to the passage of food than a tube 15 feet long would, and thus would 'become more than twice as valuable as a digestive organ. it is a fact that some men have double the length of a small intestine than other men have, and also a fact that women on the average have a greater length of small intestine than men, this would at least help to account for their differences in vitality, which every physician has noticed. As a rule, women will hear long strains and hunger better than men. Some men can go twice as long without food as others can. Some persons are hnngary and faint if they miss a single meal, while others can go without food for 24 hours or longer with little or no inconvenience. The vitality in the length of the small intestine would certainly go a long way to account for lle-se differences. The blood vessels and lacteals of the intestines pet form the same function for man that the roots do for plants. The roots absorb from the earth nutritive material. The tree is strong and of rapid growth in proportion to the numeroiisness of its root.—-"Sci-ence Siftings. ’’