Polar body

“ The Skin as a Heat-regulator. The great regulator of the bodily temperature is, undoubtedly, the skin, which performs this function by means of a self-regulating apparatus with a more or less double action. First, the skin regulates the loss of heat by means of the vaso-motor mechanism. The more blood passes through the skin, the greater will be the loss of heat by conduction, radiation, and evaporation. Hence, any action of the vaso-motor mechanism which causes dilatation of the cutaneous capillaries, leads to a larger flow of blood through the skin, and will tend to cool the body. ”

“ In opposition to this, the wingless state of the female might be urged, yet her short thicker body must contain more of the fatty substance, and must therefore emit a stronger light than that of the male. Next to respiration, the circulation of the blood appears to have considerable influence upon the light, for we know that the substance emits the light only when moist. As now, the blood flows all round upon the fatty substance, this may be considered as the moisture, which helps to support the luminousness. ”

“ If this be a true account of the solar heat, for the support of which I appeal to my experiments, it remains only for us to admit that such of the rays of the sun as have the refrangibility of those which are contained in the prismatic spectrum, by the construction of the organs of sight, are admitted under the appearance of light and colors, and that the rest, being stopped in the coats and humors of the eye, act on them, as they are known to do on all the other parts of our body, by occasioning a sensation of heat. ”

“ The light-organ excites the heat-organ by polarization unto motion and thereby originates the organ of gravity.
1161. The process in which through polar tension the trunk has been reproduced, as the Whole in miniature, is called sexual process. The æther-organs are thus sexual organs. These sexual organs can only be a leaf-formation, because the last development of the stem is the leaf. The leaf-formations which, by means of polar tension, reproduce the trunk, are the Flower. The light-organ is the corolla. The heat-organ is the pistil. The organ of gravity the seed. ”

“ We may expect by now that our eye is fitted with two modes of seeing activity, polar to each other, and that the way in which they come into operation depends on whether the interplay of positive and negative density outside the eye leads to the appearance of the blue-violet or of the yellow-red side of the colour-scale. Such a polarity in the activity of the eye can indeed be established. ”

“ The skin is the coolest part; and the more so the nearer we come to the extremities. The temperature rises, on the contrary, with increasing depth of penetration into the organism; cavities are much warmer than surfaces. The brain is-cooler than the viscera of the trunk, and the cellular tissue cooler than the muscles. Nor does the blood have the same temperature in. all parts of the body. The labors of Davy and Becquerel established the fact that the blood is warmer the nearer to the heart examinations are made. ”

“ The structure of the skin—with its drainage tubes requiring a free exit; its streams of blood seeking for oxygen from the air; its nerves demanding the contact and stimulus of the atmosphere—obviously points to the relation which should subsist between man and the external world—to the fact that his natural and intended state is one of nakedness. [116] Certain portions of the skin, in different parts of the world and among different nations, are commonly exposed to the air as Nature doubtless intended the whole body to be. Our faces and hands; in women, the neck, and often the shoulders ”

“ The sun’s vibrations reach our earth in about eight minutes and acting upon its atmosphere, it finds a resistance or polarity out of which is evolved light, heat and moisture.
Every molecule of our body is rotated into form and continues its activities by the radiant energy of the sun. ”

“ Thus, during the manvantaric solar period, or life, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our System, of which the Sun is the heart—like the circulation of the blood in the human body; the Sun contracting as rhythmically as the human heart does at every return of it. ”

“ On the other hand, the optic nerve, by reason of the peculiar structures in connection with the ends of its fibres, the rods and cones of the retina, is incomparably more sensitive to rays of light than any other nervous apparatus of the body, since the rest can only be affected by rays which are concentrated enough to produce noticeable elevation of temperature. ”

“ Not even yet have we terminated the enumeration of the co-existent polarities which in this province of nature have been brought into view. Light has polar properties; the very term polarization is the record of the discovery of these. The forces which determine the crystalline forms of bodies are of a polar nature: crystalline forms, when complete, may be defined as those forms which have a certain degree of symmetry in reference to opposite poles. ”

“ This gives a plausible explanation of the channelled structure of penumbræ which suggested the comparison to a rude thatch. Accepting this theory as in the main correct, we perceive that the very same circulatory process which, in its spasms of activity, gives rise to spots, produces in its regular course the singular "marbled" appearance, for the recording of which we are no longer at the mercy of the fugitive or delusive impressions of the human retina. And precisely this circulatory process it is which gives to our great luminary its permance as a sun, or warming and illuminating body. ”

“ Molar bodies are those in which he first discovers relations and with which he first consciously and purposely associates, and they become the type of the others. Molecular bodies are known as such only to science. The stellar bodies are first believed to be molar bodies, and it is long before the corporeal structure of the earth is discovered as a body of great magnitude associated with other bodies more nearly commensurate with them, as the sun, moon and stars. ”

“ The essential that must not only be looked for, but positively and rapidly attained, is the reaction from the 54shock produced by the cold water: the heart is actively excited, and the blood propelled with unusual force through the system; the temperature of the body rapidly rises, and a general glow supervenes, accompanied with mixed feelings of increased vitality, buoyancy and exhilaration, difficult to describe. ”

“ This again is not a direct and purely chemical or physical result of the sun's rays, but these have stimulated the cells of the skin to undergo certain modifications. Any change in the living body under changed conditions is not passive, but an active reaction to a stimulus furnished by the surroundings. The same stimulus may excite very different reactions in different individuals or species. ”

“ We know besides, that the pores of the skin can absorb not only the moisture that floats in the atmosphere, but a variety of foreign bodies, whether noxious or medicinal, which may be applied to their orifices; and as the air is in certain places loaded with noxious matter, may not clothing be considered as a filter, as it were, to separate the impurities of the air before it comes in contact with the surface of the body? ”

“ It tends to modify the differentiations already made, bringing them a step nearer to the equilibrating structure; and the physiological units next integrated, being brought under the aggregate of polar forces exercised by the whole mass, which now approaches a step nearer to that ultimate distribution of polar forces which exists in the adult organism, are coerced more directly into the typical structure. ”

“ It seems, therefore, that in the same degree as the living principle diverges from the body’s centre into the outstanding members, in that degree is the life weakened in intensity; and just as, according to physical laws, the ray of light becomes less and less intense by the square of the distance from the central source, so the vital ray, or vis, loses momentum in the same ratio as it diverges from the common central line to the periphery. ”

“ Color of the skin has relation to energy in its action; thus, in the equatorial region, where light and heat are most powerful, the skin is stimulated by these agents to vigorous action, and color is very deep; while in the temperate regions, where light and heat are not so intense, the lungs, liver, and kidneys relieve the skin of part of its duties. ”

“ The shining is an ebb and flow of the sun. Query Do not the spots and flashes of the sun depend upon this? The ebb and flow also of the sea gives out light; every motion in water shines. The sun does not simply shine by external motion, but because it is by this motion polarized unto the Innermost. It is a true gelatinous animal, a body trembling through its whole mass, and thereupon phosphorescent. ”

“ Our insight into the polar nature of visual activity will enable us now to link the external interplay of Light and Dark - to which the physical colours owe their existence - to that play of forces which we ourselves set in motion when our eye meets the world of colours in their polar differentiation.
We established earlier that in the cold colours the role of darkness belongs to the pole of levity or negative density, and the role of lightness to the pole of gravity or positive density, whereas in the case of the warm colours the roles are reversed. ”

“ Let it be noticed however, that each organ independently of the general sensibility, mobility, temperature, and circulation of the body, has a particular mode of sensation and heat, together with a capillary circulation, which being withdrawn from the influence of the heart, receives the influence only of the tonic action of the part. ”

“ However, for those who are not strong enough to take a large amount of exercise, and who cannot in this way bring about free perspiration, other methods of accelerating the activity of the pores of the skin may be employed. I have already referred to the influence of air baths, friction baths and sun baths. Remember that through these agencies the pores may be made very active without any apparent result in the form of liquid perspiration, for under ordinary conditions perspiration evaporates and the body may not become wet. ”

“ It is defined as a substance hot to the feel. [Heat, then, and light are identified as one substance.] [3]
"It has the qualities of earth except smell, taste, and gravity. It is eternal, as atoms; not so, as aggregates.
"Organic luminous bodies are beings abiding in the solar realm. The visual ray, which is the organ of sight, is lucid. Unorganic light is reckoned fourfold: earthy, celestial, alvine and mineral. Another distinction concerns sight and feel; as light or heat may be either latent or manifest, in respect of both sight and feel, or differently in regard to either. ”

“ The skin, in very cold climates, seems to be on the other hand an obstacle which prevents the internal caloric from suddenly escaping and thus placing the body in equilibrium with the surrounding medium. ”

“ The behaviour of the animals under the influence of two lights is a confirma­tion of our theory of helio­tropism inasmuch as the animal moves in such a direc­tion that the symmetrical elements of the surface of the body are struck by light of the same intensity at the same angle, so that as a consequence equal masses of photo­sensitive substances are produced in symmetrical elements of their eyes or skin in equal times. ”

“ The earth is not merely a mechanical station for the plant, in order to give it the perpendicular direction, but it is necessary for polar excitation, whereby the decomposition is imparted. A plant placed upright in pure water, although with the roots, necessarily perishes. Darkness is at the same time the lurking-place of putrefaction, as being that which only plays its part in localities where the polarizing and dissevering influence of light is wanting. ”

“ However, the influence which sun, moon, and the planets exercised upon the human body gradually became more intricate. It was no longer satisfactory to enumerate relations between the bodies of heaven and the human organs of such a general nature as given by the above table of Hermes. All parts and functions of the body were to be brought into the closest relations with the planets. ”

“ It is also found in the interior of the spinal cord, the walls of the internal organs and in various parts of the body, forming large plexuses. The solar system, also called the abdominal brain, is the greatest collection of nerve matter in the body outside the skull. ”

“ By the other view, or the corpuscular hypothesis, the beam of white light is supposed to consist of certain coloured rays, each of which has physical properties peculiar to itself, and thus is capable of producing different physiological effects. These rays falling upon a transparent or an opaque body suffer more or less absorption, and being thus dissevered, we have the effect of colour. A red body absorbs all the rays but the red ”

“ At each pole, in turn, there are six months of continual day followed by six months of continual night, and when the sun is at one of the solstices it just touches the horizon on the corresponding polar circle at the hour that marks midnight on the parts of the earth which lie outside the polar circles. ”

“ I am well persuaded that the skin would resist also less, at this age, a degree of temperature greater than that of the body, and as it permits the internal caloric to be easily lost in a colder medium, it would allow the external to penetrate in a warmer one. ”