THINGS A MAN CAN ENDURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9273, 27 June 1908, Page 1

THINGS A MAN CAN ENDURE.

• . — '■ ♦ J ■■- ■'. INJURIES THAT FAIL fO KILL, (American Paper.) To tbe layman it often seems sfcrana^ that a large and vigorous animal ukM man is so easily destroyed by apparent-' ly puny agencies. Half a dozen dieeas* . germs, each no more than l-500Oth of an inch in length, enter the veins of * healthy, muscular man, and in ten days he is dead. A few drops of prussic acid are placed on the tongue of another man, and in fire minutes he, i<oo, is dead. A^ninute pin-prick is made in the heart wall of still another man, and he dies in ten ; seconds. ■ — \ , But, as a. matter of fact, the real wonder is not that man dies so easily, . but. that he resists death so efficiently. . The human machine is by long odds th« most perfect mechanism that ever ap- '< peared on earth. It can stand injuries that would make any man-made machine fall to pieces, and it may bo hooked, mutilated and clogged in a perfectly amazing manner without perceptibly reducing its usefulness. Indeed, it would appear at times to transcend and overcome the very laws! of nature. No conceivable injury short . of absolute disintegration is instantly fatal, and there are very few injuries thiat necessarily and inevitably meal death, either at onoe or in the course a measurable time. ,-' For instance, consider the case of iht \ human brain. It is the popular opinion , that major injuries to this organ mean . immediate and certain death. A mam who desires to commit suicide and wants to make sure of it commonly places a. pistol- to his head,: and blows out his brains. .And yet such injuries to the brain substance, no mattery Low terrible they may be, seldom cause instahtane- . ous dissolution, and in a very considerable number of cases fail tooause death •at all). . ;..■'. •■.. . • Every hospital surgeon is. familiar with the fact that men who have shot . themselves in the head commonly live at least an hour or two. The shook of , the bullet striking the brain often produces instant unconsciousness, but this unconsciousness does not differ materially frok that caused by a blow; on the angle orthe jaw in the prize-ring. In j a word, the would-be suicide is'knockep out, but not dead. ■'■.. V . .- It he does die later, it w a matter of a good many minutei. 'Hifl shattered brain continues to discharge a part of its functions, and bis heart , struggles on. When he gives up the • ghost it is commonly as a result' of b«>ondary disturbances. . , Only when the bullet destroy© those parts of the brain which control his involuntary functions does he die with anything resembling suddenness. , .And sometimes even then he does not die at all '''•. The case of Phineas P. Gage, a railroad man, is a classic in the annals of American medicine. Gage was engaged in blasting, and at the time of las accident was tamping powder into a^holeia the side of a huge mass of rock. The tamping rod was a piece of iron an inch, and a quarter in diameter and weighed ' more than thirteen pounds. The powder exploded prematurely and" shot this iron clear through the poor fellow's It struck him. on the left cheek immediately under the cheek bone, and passed up through his brain, behind nia left eye and out at the top of > his head. In a word, there was a ragged wound through his brain at least' two inches long. But instead of killing the man iratantly, this injury merely efcunaeo He was carried to shelter nearly a mile away, and then without aasffltaace walked up a long flight of eUirs to bed —talking to Those about him all the while. Several hours later a. surgeon arrived and found him resting easUJS and absolutely clear in mind. . ; His splintered skull was trimmed, the wound through his brain wa< cleansed as much as possible, and «, mild sedative was administered. :Jh 9 month he was at work again, and savin^ that he was blind in his left'ey*; he suffered no permanent injury^ Up was just -as strong as ever aad h* mutilated brain managed his voluntary and involuntary functions jobs as well as before. > ' .. ■„; Strange. as it may <«em» such, case* are far from uncommon. D^uring.tiia Spanish- American War an /American volunter officer was shot in theeye and the ballet passed clear through _his brain, coming out at the back of the skull and making an immense^ and iagffed wound. . . ■ He received first aid ta-eatmenfr m tlw field, and later was brought to United States on a hospital ehip.^ He made a complete recovery and •uffere* no permanent injury other than this loss of his eye and some awkwardness in certain movements. . Again there is a famous case of a man who lost a section of his brain five inches long and yet lived for years. A multitude of other such examples are to be discovered in. the files of tb* medical journals. . Injuries to or complete loss ci otnei organs besides the brain not uncommonly fail to result in death- As. erery one knows, it i 6 possible for; a man td live for years with but one long. It i» also possible to live with one kidney. It i& possible, again, to tiro without a stomach, without a laTynx or without half a dozen other organs, just as i* is possible to live without eyee, noee, ears, teeth, legs and arms. . ; ./. A century or more ago a certain French soldier had his whole lower jaw* shot off in battle and yet he survived to a hale and green old ageV Another soldier lost what was substantially all of hie face except one eye — and lived to become an oldest inhabitant. It used to be believed that any wound, of tho heart was necessarily fatal, but of late a multitude of proofs to tne cobi. trary have been collected. To-day it is almost a commonplace of surgery W sew up breaks in the heart wall. A blow on the chest sometimes ruptures the heart, aad yet the victims 0* such injuries not seldom recover. Wounds in the heart made by Tcnives and bullets are now treated with som» ap to certainty, and although • the death rate in such cases is of course high, it is bein^ lowered year afteof year, and it would be a raeh surgeon to-day who would call any 6mail xnQurf to the heart inevitably fatal. . : It is impossible, iudeed, to.r»y iha* an injury to any organ, no matte* what its extent, Is cure to result itt deatJ). The bureau jn*ohittei yet* d«*

figned to stand all sorts of shocks, and fcven when science is utterly unable to ;|]&pair the machinery it often repairs Itself. < t Cancer, for instance, is sometimes beyond the reach of surgery, but it is not £are, "by any means, to hear of such bases ending in recovery. The body is lalwayS at; Work fighting its enemies, land EO^Boon as the latter cause any damage the work of repair is begun. Exposure to> an injury, indeed, alSeays increases the body's ability to withstand that injury. This ability, in one foirm, becomes what is known as immunity^' which is utilised to great jftdvantage in modern medicine. The man who is forced to live in strong flraughte soon becomes accustomed to jthenv^and after a little while he takes jptold np ; longer. ( This' explains in part the good health ' $ sailors, woodmen and others who rork and sleep in the open. Again, he, man who makes a habit of consumng sniall quantities of poisonous drugs, tr • of exposing himself to great heat ir' cold^or of fasting for long periods 1 gets used to these things, as the popuar phrase is, and is injured by them '■, Mar less *thsi^ the average man. I It isiwell known, for instance, that Hpeople ftfcxrha've become slaves to opium jfcire able : '"to swallow with impunity ' enough of the drug to kill a dozen orlinary persons. Thomas De Quincey, hfi celebrated author of "The Confes-. upns of an Opium Eater," tells us that ie drank 8000 drops of laudanum (the . equivalent of 320 grains of opium) a .Bay. |n the Baltimore city gaol a few years Bgo there was a man whose daily dose pas 480 grains of morphine, or one punce. One-fortieth of that amount , ! urould kill the average man. Other f irug victims have taken even more, . ' md the > medical books contain accounts )f men who have consumed as much as Hour polices a day. ," Agaitt^ there are individuals who, ;, teithout any course of slow immunisa- ; fjtion, seem to set aside all the laws of ■(Nature* iThere are, for example, many Recorded cases of persons seemingly imbervioufl to the effects of the deadly Brag cqijamonly called prussio acid. .Ordinarily ten drops of prussic acid ; |>laced; Upon the tongue of a grown man . flmll cause collapse and death within ten - j jtoinutesi:';; Yet there is a well authen- ' JUdcated case of a man who swallowed drops with no effect beyond, momentary insensibility* ) : ■ Strong muriatic acid is another violent poison that occasionally fails to .;\-GJL.-..; ■'.-."■■'■.'•■ '■ • .Would-be suicides have swallowed as touch as an ounce without permanent Ell effect. There are even cases on re-' bard of persons who have survived large - flosea qf.sulphuric acid — the most dam-tapngand.-corrosive of all common . fehemioals. , Just as it is capable, at times, of surviving terrible injuries by mechanical bnd chemical agencies, the body is ' bble, in other cases, to face enormous fextremes of temperature. The crews of the fruit steamers plying between Central America and the North Atlantic '■- Iports see the mercury go up or go down , tevery week at least 50 degrees, and on* 1 fee voyage northward it is not unusual ifo witness a drop of 45 degrees in as Jnany minutes. Win the - stokeholds of these ships, ong the Central American coast, the taercury often registers 140 degrees. ((And yet the firemen and Bailors are a (pretty healthy lot,, and , it is rare to tear of one of them dying as a result fcif the sudden changes and extreme frange of temperature. I Sir Joseph Banks, an English physiMan, made elaborate experiments to determine how much heat the human feody could stand with safety. He found \: Wiat he himself was not perceptibly injured by a .temperature of 211 degrees. ;| Other men have survived far greater (teat, ;a~nd .j9?me of the medical books .".■' \ xmtaiia references to a woman who faced several minutes with- . ] jut damage. This temperature, it will »c observed, ; is 152deg above that of : wiling wateri - lOn the. o^her hand, the body seems to jbe able to withstand any conceivable •Degree of cold. In some parts of Russia ' vHuring $Jie winter the mercury drops to [(BOdeg w p4tw zero, and yet thousands rjpf persons face this extreme cold with\but injujyt . They wear heavy furs, to^ pc sure, but their lioses and ears are' jsommpnly Exposed, and beyond rubbing Ifchese parts now and then to promote they take no precautions Against' freezing. | A temperature of 70deg below zero (fe not unknown, in the Yukon, and yet . fee country is regarded as habitable. , (There is no place on earth so hot and 100 place so cold that man must keep 'bwayj : ' In the Congo thousands of hu2nan beings live comfortably beneath a ; feun which : Bends the mercury up to 132 . fleg M'ihe' shade every day for weeks ' jat a time', and in Greenland there are yholeviSribes of people who regard jAOdeg^fcelow as comm^place. > j The, human body, in fact, is iinmea- ■•.! iwurabiy; more sturdy than any machine ever made by men, even with steel and iron as its materials. Storms which shake great steamships to pieces ißcarcely injure human bpings at all. Wo one ever heard of a wind strong j enough to blow off a man's head. And jißven such terrible natural agencies as the lightning and the earthquake often , jiaU to make the lords of the universe ;. 7 quails *■''■ -^ Even at that it takes a tremendous . blow to kill a man. Human beings : fcavebeen^buried under falling houses ' fend precipitated from great heights; •'itey 4? fcave',been starved, roasted and frozen; they have had their brains fldashed out, their hearts broken and tiieir limbs torn from them — and lived. Men have fallen from heights as j^reat as 300 ft without receiving a \j Iferatch. "■'■ Others have had all four limbs amputated, at once and got over ? 4t. 'Others have had performed tedijrras and terrible surgical operations f japon, themselves and recovered. I Others .have been shot to pieces, aphocked by enormous electric currents, /fora By -wild beasts, mutilated by de- , Iroerate " major surgery, invaded by ijdeadly gernwfe and eyes, laft foe dead jpnd buried, and yet lived on for yeaw. I Han, of a truth, is a machine more (jperfeot and more wonderful than even the planet upon which he dwells. No 'other animal is so tenacious of life, no pthej: known mechanism is so efficient.