Inventors at Work, with Chapters on DiscoveryIles, George
History
Inventors at Work, with Chapters on Discovery
Iles, George
Inventions -- History; Inventors
At this point let us for a few moments leave the field of mechanics, and
notice how inferring cause from effect may aid students of rocks, of the
heavens, of the human frame. A geologist, observing a dense limestone,
learns how severe the pressure which brought loose sediment to this
compactness. In the glass-like texture of quartz he finds an equally
plain record of intense heat. The scorings on rock-surfaces, in lines
from northward to southward, disclose to him the paths in which ages
ago the glaciers moved from their birth-places in the polar zones. In
astronomy a feat of inference incomparably more difficult was
accomplished by John Couch Adams and Urbain Leverrier, each
independently of the other. The orbit of Uranus displayed certain minute
irregularities which they referred to a planet, at that time not as yet
observed, whose place they indicated. Their remarkable inference was
verified by the discovery of Neptune on September 23, 1846.
In a path remote indeed from that of the observer of planet and star,
the surgeon in much the same way reasons from result to cause. In 1870
Fritsch and Bitzig, two German investigators, observed that in applying
an electric shock to a well defined area of the brain of a chloroformed
dog, its limbs moved. One part of the brain thus excited would cause the
fore-leg to twitch, another part would lead the hind-leg to move. When a
specific area of the animal’s brain was taken away, a corresponding part
of its body--the eyes, ears, or limbs, were permanently paralyzed. From
studies thus begun it has been clearly proved that in the brain of
animals there is a division of labor, each activity being as much
localized within the skull as it is externally in the nose, ears, or
feet. The examination of human victims of disease and injury has
confirmed all this. A patient may have suffered loss of power to write,
to speak, to stand firmly on his feet, for weeks or months before the
end. The cause in many cases is found to be a tumor, sometimes no larger
than a pea, which has pressed down upon a particular area of the brain
and so given rise to the trouble. A depressed fragment of bone in
fracture of the skull has a similar effect. With these facts in mind,
when a surgeon is called in to treat a patient who is suffering from
loss of power to write, speak or stand, he lifts the sufferer’s skull
for a small space over the specially indicated area, relieving the
depressed fracture, or exposing the small tumor, which he removes,
usually with restoration to health.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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