Organ builder

“ Then every single cell, and every grouping of cells that we call an organ, must be supported in its place securely but without hindering the free performance of its function. Not only must the protoplasm be held in place, but on account of its fragility it has also to be protected against injury; the vital parts require more careful protection than those that are less immediately essential to life. Finally, bodily motions of all sorts depend on the framework to give purchase to the muscles, which are the actual organs of motion, and so to make their movements effective. ”

“ If this position be true we are warranted and justified in the conclusion that the germs necessary to form blood vessels and other parts of the body must look to the liver for the fluids in which they would expect to construct in form and size. It seems to be nature's chemical laboratory, in which are prepared by receiving chemical qualities and quantities to suit the formation of hard and soft substances, which are to become the parts and the whole of any organ, gland, muscle, nerve, cell, veins and arteries. ”

“ The general character of tertiary manifestations may be stated as follows: They attack by preference the tissues derived from the mesoblastic layer of the embryo—the cellular tissue, bones, muscles, and viscera. They are often localised to one particular tissue or organ, such, for example, as the subcutaneous cellular tissue, the bones, or the liver, and they are rarely symmetrical. They are usually aggressive and persistent, with little tendency to natural cure, and they may be dangerous to life, because of the destructive changes produced in such organs as the brain or the larynx. ”

“ As the body is composed of individual organs, and each organ of separate tissues, so each tissue is made up of minute cells. Each cell is a little world by itself, too small to be seen by the naked eye, but open to the microscope. It has its own form and constitution as much as a special organ in the body. It absorbs from the blood such food as suits its purposes. Moreover, the number of cells in an organ is as constant as the number of organs. As the organs expand with the growth of the body, so the cells of each tissue enlarge, but shrink again with age and the decline of life. ”

“ All modern surgeons admit the inutility of applications made in this way, and now confine them to the most sub-cutaneous organs. Perhaps hereafter we shall be sufficiently acquainted with the degree of vitality of each organ, to know when the cellular texture can be the means of communication of medicinal effects, between two contiguous organs, with different structure and properties, and when it is a barrier which stops the communication of these effects. At present we go almost always groping in the dark. ”

“ Each organ is to every other as an excreting organ. In other words, to insure perfect health, every tissue, bone, nerve, tendon, or muscle should take from the blood certain materials and return to it certain others. To do this every organ must or ought to have its period of activity and of rest, so as to keep the vital fluid in a proper state to nourish every other part. ”

“ Each organ has as yet only its nutritive parenchyma, the parenchyma upon which nature has imprinted the form of the organ, that is to be developed there. In proportion as this outline is increased, the nutritive substances penetrate it, and then each organ, which until that time had been like the rest in its nature, and forming with them a homogeneous mass, begins to be distinct, and have a separate existence; each one draws from the blood the substance that is proper for it. This addition gives the attributes of thickness, of density, and of nature ”

“ Let us not, however, exaggerate this independence of the textures of the organs in diseases, lest experience should contradict us. We shall see that the cellular system is oftentimes a medium of communication, not only from one texture to another in the same organ, but from one organ to a neighbouring one. ”

“ Wherefore, if the leaping point together with the veins and blood, which are all conspicuous as one single organ at the first beginning of the embryo, be accepted as the heart (the parenchyma of which is superadded to the vesicle later in the formation of the embryo) , it is manifest that, accepted in this sense, that is, as an organ composed of parenchyma, ventricles, auricles, and blood, the heart in animals is in very truth, as Aristotle would have it, the principal and first generated part of the body ”

“ It is curious to notice how our body is wrapped in membrane. On the outside, is the skin protecting from exterior injury, and, on the inside, is the mucous membrane reaching from the lips to the innermost air cell of the lungs. Every organ is enveloped in its membrane. Every bone has its sheath. Every socket is lined. Even the separate fibers of muscles have their covering tissue. The brain and the spinal cord are triply wrapped, while the eye is only a membranous globe filled with fluid. ”

“ This newly-developed connective tissue gradually contracts, and in so doing crushes the cells and obstructs the blood-vessels, making the organ much smaller than natural, and causing the surface to be covered with little projecting knobs, consisting of portions of liver-tissue that have been less compressed than the part that separates them. ”

“ Through this faculty of the lining tissue of the blood-vessels, the size of the lumen and the direction of branching are so regulated as to oppose the least possible resistance to the flow of the blood.
" (2) The faculty possessed by the endothelium of the capillaries of each organ of adapting itself qualitatively to the particular metabolism of the organ." This adaptedness of the capillaries is, however, more usually an inherited state, i.e., brought about in the first period of development. ”

“ Douce, that it referred to an instrument "with a double row of pipes." Nichols, the historian of Leicestershire, says, "a pair of organs was the term at that time when there were two kinds of organs, the one fixed and the other portable." A more recent writer, Mr. Ashpitel, enlarging upon this passage, adds, "a payre of organs consisted of two organs conjoined, with two sets of keys one above the other; one small, and called the choir, or more probably the chayre organ; and the other the great organ, built, as its name imports, on a large scale, and used in forte passages." ”

“ Each organ has the shape of a biconvex lens, sunk to about half its thickness in the skin. The inner half is formed of radially-arranged gland tubes filled with small granular cells, and converging towards the centre of the organ. Into the connective-tissue walls of the tubes extend blood-vessels and nerves. External to the gland tubes there is a layer of long slender cells arranged perpendicularly to the surface, and more externally still a layer of ganglion cells. There is evidence that these organs multiply by division. ”

“ He laid down the general morphological principle that the fundamental organs have essentially the shape of tubular cavities, as appears in the first form of the central organ of the nervous system, in the two muscular and osseous tubes which form the walls of the body, and in the intestinal canal; and he followed out with admirable clearness the steps by which from these fundamental systems the other organs arise secondarily, such as the organs of sense, the glands, lungs, heart, vascular glands, Wolffian bodies, kidneys and generative organs. ”

“ Thus, without tracing the like remote alterations implied by extra growth of the veins, lymphatics, glandular organs, and other agencies, it is manifest that a large amount of rebuilding must be done throughout the organism, before any organ of importance can be permanently increased in size and power to a great extent. Hence, though such extra growth in any part as does not necessitate considerable changes throughout the rest of the organism, may rapidly take place ”

“ The whole of the alimentary wall is formed of a single layer of hypoblast cells.
A most important organ connected with the alimentary system still remains to be dealt with, viz. the atrial or peribranchial cavity. The first rudiments of it appear at about the time of hatching, in the form of a pair of dorsal epiblastic involutions (fig. 8 V. kl) , at the level of the junction between the brain and the spinal cord. These involutions grow inwards, and meet corresponding outgrowths of the branchial sack, with which they fuse. ”

“ There is a large amount of reciprocity among the tissues; in the case of paired organs the loss of one can be made good by increased activity of the remaining, and certain of the organs are so nearly alike in function that a loss can be compensated for by an increase or modification of the function of a nearly related organ. The various internal parts are connected by means of a close meshwork of interlacing fibrils, the connective tissue, support and strength being given by the various bones. Everywhere enclosing all living cells and penetrating into the densest of the tissues there is fluid. ”

“ Hence the physicians were constantly searching for some object of corresponding shape to an organ of the body. The most natural application of this doctrine would be the use of the organs of the lower animals for the treatment of the corresponding diseased organs in man. Thus diseases of the heart were to be treated with the hearts of animals, liver disorders with livers, and so on. ”

“ First, other congeries of glands occupy but a particular part of the system, or constitute a particular organ, as the liver, or kidneys; but those glands, which secrete the mucus, and perspirable matter, which are called capillaries, are of very great extent; they receive the blood from the arteries, separate from it the mucus, which lines every cell, and covers every cavity of body; and the perspirable matter, which softens and lubricates the whole surface of the skin, and the more extensive surface of the air-vessels, which compose the lungs. ”

“ When an organ is exercised properly, there is an increased blood supply to it, and, consequently, stimulated nutrition and growth in various parts, such as in the muscular, nervous or other tissues.
When an organ is disused there is diminished blood supply, and, consequently, diminished growth and functional capacity. In man it is known that certain activities, such as coal-heaving, shoemaking, etc., produce recognizable effects upon the muscular system, the skeleton, and other parts of the body. ”

“ On the other hand, if the lungs cannot oxidize the blood, or the heart drive fresh pabulum to the brain, that organ collapses immediately, and, if a stream of [104] pure blood is not quickly restored to it, dies. No return of the circulation can then restore it; the death of the rest of the animal must follow.
Being the most delicate, the cells of the central nervous system usually die first, and we then say that the man is dead. So the body may be, but much of the protoplasm of which it is composed—whole organs, in fact—remains alive ”

“ The writer is not aware who first introduced into the organ a rank of soft-toned pipes purposely tuned a trifle sharp or flat to the normal pitch of the organ, so as to cause a beat or wave in the tone. Fifty years ago such stops were sparingly used and many organists condemned their employment altogether. Stops of the kind were hardly ever found in small organs and the largest instruments seldom contained more than one. ”

“ Fifty years ago it was common to find the number of ranks of mixtures in an organ largely exceed the total number of foundation stops. Mixtures were inserted in the pedal departments of all large organs. Organists of the time do not seem to have objected and many of the leading players strongly opposed Hope-Jones when he came out as the champion of their abolition. ”

“ It is only by slow degrees that the great complicity which characterizes many organs is finally attained. For example, the heart is at first only a straight tube. By enlargement and the formation of longitudinal and transverse partitions, the fully developed organ is finally produced. The stomach and intestines are also at first but a simple straight tube. The stomach and large intestine are formed by dilatation; and by a growth of the tube in length while the ends are confined, the small intestines are formed. The other internal organs are successively developed by similar processes. ”

“ The blood is a fluid akin to the lymph, but confined in a system of tubes. Through these tubes it is driven at a considerable velocity, and in the course it takes passes within a reasonable distance of every cell in the body. As it passes the cells of the alimentary canal, they discharge the nutriment they have absorbed into it; as it passes through the other organs of the body, it discharges the requisite materials into the lymph bathing the actual cells: these are then able to help themselves. ”

“ We have, in the skeleton, a complicated apparatus of parts hinged and movable upon one another; the agent moving these parts is the same agent that we find in the heart walls propelling the blood through the circulation, in the alimentary canal squeezing the food along its course, and universally in the body where motion occurs, except in the case of the creeping phagocytes, and the ciliary waving of ciliated epithelium. This agent is muscle. We have, in muscular tissue, a very wide departure from the structure of the primordial cell ”