English
The ‘pneuma’ mixed with the air brought from the lungs, becomes the vital essence of life (animal spirit) and from the brain, circulates to all parts of the body with the nerves. Before Galen it was believed that the vital spirit {pneuma = ?d\:) circulated in the arteries, for arteries a,re always found empty after death. According to Charaka (IV. 7. 8) there are eight handfuls {aJijali) of blood and six of lymph in a normal healthy human body. (Because the body fluid constantly increases, or decreases, any calculation by the ‘anjali’ measure can be but conjectural). There are ten handfuls of water, according to each individual’s own measure—the water that after absorption, becomes mixed with feces, urine, blood and other materials of the body ; which circulating in the system, nourishes the outer skin ; which entering into the abscess under the skin, is known as ‘las'ika’; which being evaporated by the heat of the body, is eliminated as perspiration ; that water (udaka = serovs fluid) 76 ANCIENT HINDU MEDICINE is ten handfuls. The material that is first formed out of the digested food and which is known as the chyle, is nine handfuls. The Wood is eight handful, feces seven, lymph six, bile five ( or the venous blood), urine four, ‘vasa’ (serum of the flesh) three, fat two, bone-marrow one, brain (or brain-serum) half handful, semen half handful and ‘ojas’ (prostate gland secretion) half handful.” Ckco'aka IV. 7. 10'^^. , According to Poster {Physiology^ ji. 49), “the total quantity of blood in the human body is about one thirteenth of the body weight.” Howell (Physiology, p. 458) says : “The ratio of weight of blood to Aveight of body is in the dog 7. 7 per cent; rabbit and cat 5 p. c. ; birds 10 p c. ; in man we have upon record two determinations on guillotined criminals made by Bischoff, which 44. g<T ui‘ cfcryr imuBJifvra ^ sf%- ^crgggf i w. ftw, 'gsnO ^ tgg, awI' grgfg gggu', awtq PHYSIOLOGY 77 gave 7. 7 and 7. 2 per cent. Haldane and Smith however have devised a modification of Greliant’s carbon monoxide method, 'which they have applied to living men. The results of some 74 experiments gave them an average value of only 5 per cent per man. The distri¬ bution of this blood in the tissues of the body at any time has been estimated by Ranke from experiments on freshly killed rabbits, as follows : spleen, 0. 23 p. c.; brain and cord, 1. 24 p. c.;, kidneys, 1. 63 p. c.; skin, 2. 10 p. c.; intestines, 6. 30 p.c.; bones, 8. 24 p. c.; heart, lungs and great blood-vessels, 22. 76 p. c.; I'esting muscles, 29. 20 p. c. ; liver, 29. 30 p, c.*' The blood circulates in the tubular closed vessels, for thereby the pressure is increased and the time for completing the circulation is. reduced. “If we take 180 grams, as the quantity in man, ejected at each sti*oke at a pressure of 250 mm. of mercury, which is equivalent to 3. 21 meters of blood, this means that the left ventricle is capable at its systole of lifting 180 grams 3. 21 m. high,, i. e. it does 578 gram- meters of work at each beat. Supposing the j heart to beat 72 times a minute, this would give for the day’s work of the left ventricle nearly 60,000 kilogram-meters. Calculating the work 78 ANCIENT HINDU MEDICINE of the right ventricle at one-fourth of the left, the work of the whole heart during the day would amount to 75,000 kilogram-meters.” Foster’s Physiology, p. 215^. The blood is the medium through which every cell of the body is supplied with its nutritive needs. In blood circulate the synthetized ele¬ ments of the ingested food. In the capillaries, the blood-plasma filters through and fills the interstitial space, bathing every tissue in the lymph-fluid, from Avhich the cells extract the nutritive materials they need for their sustenance and growth and to which they discharge their waste products. Without blood-circulation there can be no supply of the lymph fluid for the pre¬ servation of the tissues. This is easily seen in the occlusion of the main artery of the extremity when putrefactive fermentation takes place of an animal tissue still attached to the body, known as th .9 ‘gangrene’ with the production of gases as sulphuretted hydrogen and volatilized fat, which "ives the bad odor and the iron-content of the hemoglobin is precipitated into sulphide of iron which imparts to the limb a range of colors com¬ mencing in green and terminating in black. In addition to supply the nutritive fluid to the cells, the chief function of the blood is to carry PHYSIOLOGY 79 oxygen with hemoglobin, hormones and glandular secretions for tissue respiration, oxidation, and stimulation and in the intercellular oxidation, heat of the body is genei’ated. When the oxygen of the blood is reduced and it comes hack to the heart through the veins to he sent to the lungs, to he charged with oxygen, it is of purple color hut when it is loaded with oxvsjen. it is sparkle bright-red. The venous blood contains many waste products of the cells, dissolved in it as the amonium carbonate, urea, urates, xanthin bases, carbonic acid as carbonates, cholesterin and other substances. Charaka and Susruta formed right conception of the function of the blood and the lymph in broad general outlines. Of course it was not possible for them to know their complex func¬ tional utilities in detail. Nor do we yet know. But they thought that the nerves were also tuberal vessels, thi’ough which flowed the vital force of life, something too fine for the eyes to see and which brought the sensory impressions to the central neiwous system for co-ordination and carried'the motor impulses to theperiphery.lt . was invisible but mighty like the air which brings heat and cold waves, storms and tempests {Charaka li 12. 6 ) or like blowing with bellows which in- 80 ANCIENT HINDU MEDICINE tensifies the fire of the furnace and which it was compared to and identified with. But the exact nature of the nerve impulse and the mode of its conduction, is not yet completely understood. It is usually compared with the electric cuiTent. But the sensory and the motor nerves are differ¬ ent, the sensory fibres only bring impressions to the nerve-centre, while the motor only carry them from the centre to the periphery. Yet his¬ tological or chemical examination hardly reveals any structural differentiation. Moreover the propagation and the velocity of the nerve-force depends on the nature and locality of the nerve- fibre, the temperature and thepressure. The nerve- fibre is one of the units of a nerve-trunk : it is the axis-cylinder process of a neuron and is either medullated, that is, surrounded by a white sub¬ stance called myelin, or non-medullated; either the medullated or the non-medullated may or may not be surrounded by the primitive sheath or neuri¬ lemma, so that there are four forms of nerve-fibres. The neuron is the cell unit of the nerve-fibre and the neurons propagate their impulse by contact of the dendrites, the terminal arborization round the axon. The neurons also differ greatly in size, shape and internal structure and they are general¬ ly classified as the bipolar and multipolar cells. PHYSIOLOGY 81 This structural variation explains the differ- -ence in speed of nerve impulstion. Helmholtz found that the motor nerve of a frog travels with the velocity of 28 to 30 meters per second and the researches of Piper indicated that the motor nerve of a man travels at the velocity of 117 to 125 meter per second. There does not seem to be any structural difference between two afferent or efferent nerves, as for an example, between audi¬ tory and olfactory, and in their mode of conduc¬ tion and speed, and if they carry different impres¬ sions and impulses, it is because their terminal endings have been developed to catch particular impressions and the lobe in the brain has been specialized as an economy to the system to receive, co-ordinate and react only to special impulses. It is just like two electric wires one of which has been connected to ring the bell and the other to make light. By the specially adapted peculiar structure of the retina, the vibrations of light (color-images = rupa) can be focussed upon it, setting up nerve- impulses that are transmitted by the fibres of the optic nerve and optic track to tlie visual centre in the cortex in the brain, which is situated in the occipital lobes, for co-ordination, color-conscious¬ ness and response to the stimuli. Total blindness 6 82 ANCIENT HINDU MEDICINE follows the removal of both occipital lobes. But if only one lobe is ablated or injured, there is a jiartial blindness, affecting the symmetrical halves of both eyes known as ‘hemipicC ; the right one influencing the two right halves of the eyes, and the left one, the two left halves of the retinas. The outer ear is so .constituted that when the vibrations of matter, the rapidly alternating variations of pressure, what is commonly known as the ‘waves of sound’, forced through the‘ accoustic apparatus, strike against the auditory epithelium, richly supplied with the nerve-fibres of the cochlear branch, and the sensory impulse thus generated is carried over the auditory nerve (eighth cranial nerve) and track to the auditory centre in the first convolution of the ‘temporal auditory lobe,’i where auditory con¬ sciousness is developed. The taste {rasa) nerve"fibres are distributed to parts of the buccal cavity and especially the tongue, of which the most sensitive parts are the tip, the borders, and the • posterior portion of the dorsum in the circum vallate papillae, Xlie anterior two-thirds of the tongue’are supplied with sensory fibres from the lingual nerve ( a branch of the fifth nerve) and the posterior third from the glossopharyngeal.