Body mass

“ On the other hand, when a body is situated in the gravitational field of the earth, the gravitational force which acts upon it and which is commonly known as the weight of the body not only depends on the mass of the earth but likewise varies with the mass of the body. ”

“ Weight has been defined as the measure of the earth's attraction. A body weighing one pound attracts the earth and is attracted by it with a force of one pound, but the same body at the sun's surface would attract the mass of the sun with a force of twenty-seven pounds, since its weight has been increased twenty-seven times by the sun's attraction. ”

“ If the comparative excess of non-vital tissue in the form of fat in woman be eliminated and estimates be based only on the active organic mass of her body, as compared with the same mass in man, the excess of brain weight in woman over that in man will be still more marked. ”

“ Though far less numerous than the red corpuscles, yet, as ten thousand are contained in a cubic millimetre of blood—a mass less than a pin's head—it results that the human body is pervaded throughout all its blood-vessels by billions of these separately living units. ”

“ Now, we know that work in mechanics is estimated by multiplying the weight of the mass raised by the height to which it is lifted. Though the body is lifted only a little at each step in running, yet as these steps are renewed as often as four or even six times a second, we see what number of kilogrammetres a game of tag a quarter of an hour in length may represent. This considerable work is accomplished without effort, because the legs, the thighs, and the pelvis, which co-operate in executing it, are re-enforced by the strongest muscular masses of the body. ”

“ Where we see a body raised in a scale, we are sure that there is in the opposite scale, however concealed from sight, some counterpoising weight equal to it; but it is still allowed to doubt, whether that weight be an aggregate of several distinct bodies, or one uniform united mass. ”

“ The weight of the blood, which is always greater than that of water, depends, of course, upon the amount of solid matter and the abundance of the corpuscles. In man, the red corpuscles constitute one third to a little less than one half the mass of the blood. The blood of birds has the largest proportion; and it appears that the temperature bears a relation to the amount of solid matter.
The amount of blood is greater in warm-blooded animals; and the proportion of blood to the size of the body increases with the size. The blood of man is by weight about one thirteenth the weight of the body. ”

“ What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? ”

“ All known ponderable bodies have mass. That means there is a regular connection between the property which makes a body tend to the earth with a certain definite force (called weight) and the property by virtue of which a body assumes certain velocities under the influences of motive causes. ”

“ I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. ”

“ What is mass? According to Newton, it is the product of the volume by the density. According to Thomson and Tait, it would be better to say that density is the quotient of the mass by the volume. What is force? It is, replies Lagrange, that which moves or tends to move a body. It is, Kirchhoff will say, the product of the mass by the acceleration. But then, why not say the mass is the quotient of the force by the acceleration?
These difficulties are inextricable.
When we say force is the cause of motion, we talk metaphysics, and this definition, if one were content with it, would be absolutely sterile. ”

“ Though we may never be able to comprehend human life, we know certainly that it is a movement, of whatever nature it be. The existence of movement unavoidably implies a body which is being moved and a force which is moving it. Hence, wherever there is life, there is a mass moved by a force. All mass possesses inertia, all force tends to persist. ”

“ Of dry flesh-substance, including a little skin and jelly, there are seventeen pounds, and that is the working part of the frame. It is by its means the ton-weight can be lifted one mile high in a single day, and that all the moving and acting, of whatever kind, are effected. Remember, then, that the acting part of the living body is flesh-substance, and that of that flesh-substance there are not more than seventeen pounds in a full-grown man. ”

“ So the actual bulk and weight of blood scarcely ever varies in the same person, although it may be quite different in different individuals. For the average man it may be set down at from one-fourteenth to one-twelfth of the body weight—that is, between 103⁄4 and 121⁄2 lbs. Women and fat men have proportionately less.
The remainder of the body-weight is made up of the heavy liver, the light lungs, the heart, spleen, pancreas, kidneys, intestines, brain, nerves, skin, hair, nails. ”

“ When you look at any person you quickly discern whether fat, bone or muscle predominates in his construction. If fat predominates he leans toward the Alimentive, no matter what other types he may have in combination; if firm, well-defined muscles are conspicuous, he is largely Muscular; but if his bones are proportionately large for his body he has much of the Osseous type in his makeup. ”

“ The greater part of bone and fat is what might be called lifeless tissue. The substance that makes the body alive is protoplasm, which forms the chief bulk of muscle, brain, nerves, lungs, heart, etc. ”

“ Far and away the most important element in flesh and bone is oxygen, and the bulk of that energetic gas which remains tranquilly compressed within us is something marvellous. In a ten-stone-ten man the weight of oxygen is no less than 106 lbs., and the natural bulk of it, if it were set free, would be equal to a beam of wood one foot square and 1,191 feet—nearly a quarter of a mile—long, or several hundred times the bulk of the body itself. ”

“ It is easy enough to see why thorough and regular exercise is absolutely necessary to health.
We all know—at least, we all should know—that the general size of the human body depends on muscular development. The same bony frame which makes a slim-jim girl that tips the scales at seventy-five pounds can be padded with good solid flesh until it boasts of a triple chin, fingers like wee roly-poly puddings, and a full 200 pounds in weight. The framework of the body counts little toward size. ”

“ Even before I began to develop adipose tissue after twenty-five, I would float on fresh water without moving a muscle, my observation being that the slim normal boy must vibrate his hands. I am a curiosity in that form of skeleton and contour of body are mostly feminine, particularly the bust. ”

“ This property of becoming extended and then returning to its original length is still by most physiologists described under the name elasticity, but I prefer to retain this term for the property a muscle has of returning to its original length after it has contracted. If, however, we regard muscle as a passive structure, then we find that it is a slightly but perfectly elastic body. It yields to a weight, but when the weight is removed the muscle readily returns to its former length. ”

“ If we may imagine the physico-chemical analysis of the body to be carried through to the very end, may we expect to find at last an unknown something that transcends such analysis and is neither a form of physical energy nor anything given in the physical or chemical configuration of the body? Shall we find anything corresponding to the usual popular conception—which was also along the view of physiologists—that the body is "animated" by a specific "vital principle," or "vital force," a dominating "archæus" that exists only in the realm of organic nature? ”

“ Weight not Fixed, but Variable.—Weight does not depend alone upon the density of the body weighed, but also upon the density of the earth. For the attraction causing the pressure which we call weight is a mutual attraction, and is in proportion to the quantities of matter in both the body and the earth. If, therefore, the density of the earth were increased twice, three times, or four times, the weights of all bodies would be increased in the same proportion ”

“ But besides water to do transporting work, flesh substance to do active mechanical or moving work, and mineral substance to do passive mechanical or supporting work, there is yet another kind of material within the body. You have as much as six pounds of fat, scattered about or packed away amid the seventeen pounds of dry flesh. ”

“ The biological law is of a general nature: if the brain of a rat weighs 40 centigrams, that of an ox weighs 734 grams, and that of an elephant 4,896 grams.
"The absolute volume of the brain increases with the total volume of the body." ”

“ For example, the growth in body weight and in muscle may proceed more rapidly than the proportionate growth of the lungs or the liver, or the weight may increase more rapidly than the proportionate strength of the muscles. ”

“ The normal weight of a man five feet in height is 120 pounds; of a man five feet ten inches, 169 pounds. Now, suppose the latter really weighs 300 pounds by accumulation of fat, what results but that all this superfluous matter has to be supplied with capillaries, and these have to get blood from vessels only constructed to circulate the original quantity? No wonder is it that the circulation is enfeebled and impeded! By this increase of adipose there is no increase of propelling force. ”

“ This process is continued until all the bodies have been considered, care being taken that all the units of weight in the bodies which have been considered are added to the units of weight in the body under consideration when dividing the line in which the centre of gravity is found. ”

“ We had, let us say, always seen heavy bodies sink when their support was taken away; we had also seen, perhaps, that the sinking of heavier bodies forced lighter bodies upwards. But now we see a lever in action, and we are suddenly struck with the fact that a lighter body is lifting another of much greater weight. ”

“ The properties and characteristics of the human body, as a physical structure, are not altered nor affected by the fact that it is composed of live tissues, such as bones, muscles, arteries, veins, nerves, etc., and of live organs as the brain, heart, lungs, liver, stomach, kidneys, etc., for the body and every organ and part of it has the same length, breadth, thickness, [29] and weight, whether living or dead, at least, until disintegration sets in. ”

“ If, therefore, we increase the weight of a body three hundred and fifty-four thousand times, in consequence of the greater amount of matter in the sun, and diminish it twelve thousand five hundred and forty-four times, in consequence of the force acting at a greater distance from the body, we shall find that the body would weigh about twenty-eight times more on the sun than on the earth. Hence, a man weighing three hundred pounds would, if conveyed to the surface of the sun, weigh eight thousand four hundred pounds, or nearly three tons and three quarters. ”

“ The capacity of the lungs goes on increasing with age and height, so that men from five feet to six feet high inspire from 174 to 262 cubic inches in a progressively ascending scale. Moreover, the growth of the heart goes on relatively to the growth of the body. ”

“ The Fat, Overweight Individual
¶ Soft flesh thickly padded over a small-boned body distinguishes the pure Alimentive type. In men of this type the largest part of the body is around the girth; in women it is around the hips. These always indicate a large nutritive system in good working order. Fat is only surplus tissue—the amount manufactured by the assimilative system over and above the needs of the body. ”

“ So long as the organs of secretion and excretion are active the quantitative and qualitative condition of the blood is maintained at a tolerably uniform standard in each individual. At different periods of life the relation of blood-weight to body-weight varies. ”

“ I hope to satisfy you that the mass which is excised is only the product of a far deeper systemic change, which has probably already produced other, more or less similar masses or deposits elsewhere—in the bones and internal organs or lymphatics. ”

“ The loss or gain in body-weight has always been taken as indicating the nature of body condition, a loss usually indicating that there is a loss of body substance and a gain the reverse. In experiments in which a delicate balance between the income and outgo is maintained, as in these experiments, it is of special interest to compare the losses in weight as determined by the balance with the calculated metabolism of material and thus obtain a check on the computation of the whole process of metabolism. ”

“ The antagonistic mass, originating in a peripheral relation in the nervous mass, will surround the residue of the latter like a bladder or cyst, just like the planetary masses, or the colours, have primordially surrounded the sun as great hollow globes. The aggregate and purer nervous mass becomes thus directly the central mass of the animal—the brain. ”

“ Learned men have made very curious experiments; to ascertain how much the several organs throw out of the body, It is found that the skin throws off five out of eight pounds of the food and drink, or probably about three or four pounds a day. The lungs throw off one quarter as much as the skin, or about a pound a day. The remainder is carried off by the kidneys and lower intestines. ”

“ Many persons have expressed surprise that a human body of great size should weigh so little, as many human skeletons of nothing but bone, exceed this weight. Recently some experiments have been made in Paris, which have demonstrated the fact of the human body being reduced to ten pounds, by being exposed to a heated atmosphere for a long period of time. The color of the skin was dark, not black; the flesh was hard and dry upon the bones. At the side of the body lay a pair of moccasins, a knapsack and an indispensable or reticule. ”