Mind and Body; or, Mental States and Physical ConditionsAtkinson, William Walker
Science
Mind and Body; or, Mental States and Physical Conditions
Atkinson, William Walker
Mental suggestion
The following quotation from Hudson, following Stephens, is
interesting: "An aggregation of cells became a confederation, with its
differentiation of cell functions and still further division of labor.
As a result of a long process of such differentiation, the organisms
of the larger animals and of man came to be composed, as we find
them, of thirty or more different species of cells. For example, we
have the muscle cells, whose vital energies are devoted to the office
of contraction, or vigorous shortening of length; connective-tissue
cells, whose office is mainly to produce and conserve a tough fibre
for binding together and covering in the organism; bone cells, whose
life work is to select and collocate salts of lime for the organic
framework, levers and joints; hair, nail, horn and feather cells,
which work in silicates for the protection, defense, and ornamentation
of the organism; gland cells, whose _motif_ in living has come to be
the abstraction from the blood of substances which are recombined
to produce juices needed to aid the various processes or steps of
digestion; blood cells, which have assumed the laborious function of
general carriers, scavengers, and repairers of the organism; eye, ear,
nasal and palate cells, which have become the special artificers of
complicated apparatus for transmitting light, sound, odors, and flavors
to the highly sentient brain cells; pulmonary cells, which elaborate
a tissue for the introduction of oxygen and the elimination of carbon
dioxide and other waste products; hepatic (liver) cells, which have, in
response to the needs of the organism, descended to the menial office
of living on the waste products and converting them into chemical
reagents to facilitate digestion--these and numerous other species of
cells; and lastly, most important and of greatest interest, brain and
nerve cells."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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