THE HUMAN BODY

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 26, 30 December 1925, Page 2

THE HUMAN BODY

CRITICAL EXPERIMENT. MODERN MODE OF LIFE. LONDON, Nov. 16. Sir Arthur Keith, curator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in the courso of the Lloyd Roberts Lecture which he delivered, this afternoon before the Royal Society of Medicine, countered the attacks which Metchnikoff made against nature. In Metchnikoff’s view, he pointed out, the large bowel was useless and man could even dispense with his stomach and also with portions of his small intestine, while tho body was to him a battlefield / on which in its fight against bacteria the body was severely hampered by a heritage of structures which had become out-of-date and useless. Sir Arthur Keith quoted Archdeacon Paley to show that our list of useless structures decreased as our knowledge increased. Tho men and womon living in GreatBritain to-day to the extent of 90 per cent, were descended from individuals who 200 generations ago had been dependent on the natural but precarious harvest of sea, river, forest and moorland. City life was a new experiment for Europeans, and the alimentary tract evolved to meet the needs of our primitive ancestry had now to adapt itself to a modern dietary. Civilisa-" tion was submitting tho human body to a vast and critical experiment, and an organism devised to meet the needs of the hunter had under the stress of modern civilisation to serve modern requirements. It said much for its adaptability that it was able to stand these stresses as well as it did.

APPENDICITS AMONG APES. In one connection civilisation spared tho body. Less strain was placed 6n tho heat regulating mechanism, and under modern conditions the human body was tending more nnd more to resemble a hothouse plant. It was for tho purpose of economy, Sir Arthur Keith insisted, that the great bowelcame into existence. In fishes potent digestive juices had to be produced at tho expense of body tissues, but with tho evolution of land-living, air-breath-ing forms much of tho expenditure was saved by tho utilisation of bacterial digestion. Darwin, unfortunately, had stated that the appendex was a useless structure, and Metchnikoff had accepted this view. Ho had, however, himself dissected half a dozen gibbons taken from the junglo and had found in two of them a row of fruit stones, showing that the appendex shared in the work of digestion. There was no evidence to suggest that tho anthropod ape suffered from appendicits in its natural habitat, but they did beconfe subject to it when kept in captivity. Out of 61 chimpanzees dying in captivity 10 had suffered from appendicits, and the -inference was not that the appendex was a vestigial structure, but that it broke down under the conditions of modern civilisation because it could not withstand the conditions to which it was exposed. THE SHORT-SERVICE SYSTEM. Arguing from the behaviour of the eye and the way in which most men after 45 needed spectacles, Sir Arthur Keith suggested that 45 and not 100 was the natural age of man, putting forward tho view that Nature was running tho human army on the short-servico system, and remarking that it was a moot point whether it would be an advantage for civilisation that all should livo to bo centenarians. ifxploding another popular belief, Sir Arthur Keith considered the problem of tho teeth, and denied that their condition in modern man was due to his dietary. Investigation showed that every fourth or fifth child in Britain compared with those of the older type possessed palates reduced in size and deformed in shape. TTie modern British people were particularly notable for the character of their cheek bones and the bony support of the nose, nover noted in tho early inhabitants of Britain. When the Continental cartoonist wished to represent “John Bull” it was always theso characteristics that he emphasised.

“I have said enough, I believe,” Sir Arthur Keith continued, ‘‘to convince you that Metchnikoff was right when lie said that civilisation had launched man on a great experiment. From the experiment there is no turning back. We cannot return to the conditions of human life which prevailed in this country 6000 years ago. There are more people in one of tho lesser back streets of London than could find an existence in tho whole length and breadth of the Thames Valley if they, returned to the manners of living of their distant ancestors. Seeing how differently we are circumstanced in every relation of life in food, in drink, in shelter, in warmth, in occupation, and in amusement —the wonder is not that structural imperfections and functional disharmonies should develop in a proportion of our members, but that so many of us should escape harm altogether and enjoy good health. It says much for tho adaptational reaction in the human body that it withstands the artificial conditions of modorn civilisation as well as it does.” As to the way out of modern difficulties, Sir Arthur Keith contended that when we had replaced our ignorance by real knowledge wo should be in a position not to adapt our bodily structure to our mode of living, but our mode of living to our bodily structure.