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Facts About the Human Body

The average height of a newly-born infant is 18 inches; average weight, 6.77 lbs. It takes three years for the child to grow the second 18 inches, so as to be three feet high.

Average weight of adult male, 145 lbs.; height five feet seven inches; chest measurement of male, 36 inches; drawing strength between hands, 75 lbs. The skeleton is one inch shorter than the measurement of the living personskeleton weighs about 14 lbs. -there are 240 bones. The body contains about 12 lbs. of blood; about 61/3 ozs. pass through the heart in each beat, and in adults from 65 to 75 beats occur per minute. All this passes through the lungs and is revivified by the oxygen of the air-as bright red blood goes by the subdivisions of the arteries to every minutest portion of the body, and returns laden with impurities as dark venous blood through the veins to the heart again.

The heart is a little larger than the fist, and weighs about 9 to II OZS. The adult male brain weighs 49 to 50 ozs., female 44 to 45 ozs.; the nerves of of motion and sensation from every portion of the body end in the brain and spinal cord.

The lungs consist of about 174 millions sacs or cells at the end of minute tubes that unite to form larger tubes, and these form the two bronchial tubes, and these unite in the windpipe, opening into the mouth and nose. At each breath the lungs are filled with air, the purpose of which is to oxygenate the blood. The blood absorbs about 30 ozs. of oxygen per day, sufficient to consume in the tissues of the body the carbon from about three pounds of bread. The utmost amount of air expirable at one breath is calculated at 200 to 250 cubic inches.

The stomach lies beneath the lungs, near the centre of the body, and is a sac of a capacity of about a pint (without distension) in which the food is changed by the digestive juices and ferments.

The liver, to the right, and beneath the stomach, weighs 50 to 60 ozs.; it changes the starch of foods and sugar, secretes bile, and otherwise aids in digestion. Spleen, to left of stomach, about the size of fist, weighs five to seven ozs.; functions undetermined. The intestines, about 34 feet in length; the digestion of the food and the absorption of its nutrient qualities into the lacteals and the blood is completed in the intestines.

The two kidneys weigh each about 4½ ozs.; about 1,000 ozs. of blood pass through them in an hour, and by them the waste fluid portions of the food not useful to the blood are strained out. The waste fluids of the body are also exuded through the pores of the skin. The area of the surface of the body is about 2,500 square inches, it contains about 7,000,000 pores, each about 14 of an inch long, or a total length of nearly 28 miles of pores.

The secretions of the body, saliva, gastric juice, chyle, bile, etc., which are absorbed from the blood and reabsorbed by it in twenty-four hours, amount to 25 lbs. Adults require eight or nine hours' sleep.

WHY IS FOOD REQUIRED?

The question seems almost absurd, so familiar is the fact; and yet the answer to it involves one of the grandest chapters in the history of science. In its simplest form it may be given in three words: it is fuel. We require food frequently, for just the same reason that a fire requires coal frequently, and a lamp oil-because we are burning away. The air that we breathe into our lungs contains oxygen, and this oxygen combines with, or burns, the muscles or other organs of our bodies just as it does the coals in a fire. About 30 oz. of oxygen a day are thus consumed, requiring about 12 oz. of carbon to replace the waste, or say three pounds of bread. The heat produced in a man's body in the course of a day is considerable in quantity, though not very intense in quality. Taking the average, it is enough to raise five and a half gallons of water from freezing point to boiling point, and this is about the heat that would be given off during the burning of a pound of coal. All this heat comes from slow wasting or burning of the substance of the body, so that it is evident that if we did not make up for this constant loss by eating food, our organs would soon be wasted away and consumed.