The History of a Mouthful of Bread by Jean Macé (great novels to read txt) 📕

host is carried by the priest highest in authority, in a glass box placed on a staff about four feet long, which he holds before him and so far elevated that he has to look up to it. Over his head a richly embroidered canopy of satin is always carried by several men; and while these are passing, all good Catholics uncover the head and bend the knee, wherever they may be.

It is the custom also for the priest to be called to administer the sacrament to any one about to die, on which occasion he always walks under this canopy, dressed in his priestly robes, carrying the host and preceded by some boys, ringing a bell, when the same ceremony is observed. In passing a regiment or company of soldiers, the column is halted, wheeled into line, and with arms presented, the whole line, officers and men, kneel before it, and the priest usually turns and offers a benediction. When he goes in the evening to the house of the dying, it is customary for the people to go out upon the balconies with lighted lamps and kneel while the host is being carried by.]

You will read about these two men by-and-by in history. Meantime I will not bid you do exactly the same as St. Just, because you would be laughed at; but in one point of view he was not altogether wrong. The human body is, in very truth, a temple in which the Deity maybe said to reside, not inactively, not veiling his presence, but living and moving unceasingly, watching on our behalf over the mysterious accomplishment of the everlasting laws which equally guide the
chyme in its workings through our frames, and direct the sun in its course through the heavens. We mortals eat, but it is God who brings nourishment out of our food.


LETTER XI.

THE LIVER.

I fear you will be getting a little weary, my dear, of dwelling so long on this intestinal tube, where things which looked so well on one's plate become so transformed that they cannot be recognized, and where there is nothing to talk about but chyme , and bile , and the
pancreas, and all sorts of things neither pleasant to the eye nor agreeable to the ear.

But what is to be done? It is always the same story with useful things. The people by whose labor you live in this world, are by no means the handsomest to look at, and so it is in the little world we carry about in our bodies.

Never mind! Keep up your heart. We are getting to the end. We shall very soon be following the nourishing portion of our food, on its journey to the blood, and you will find yourself in new scenes.

First, though, let us say a few words about the liver-the bile-manufacturer; and to begin with, I will describe the place he occupies in our interior.

The interior of the human body is divided into two large compartments, placed one above the other; the chest and the abdomen . These are two distinct apartments, each containing its own particular class of tenants: the upper one being occupied by the heart and the lungs (the respective offices of which I will presently explain to you); while in the lower are the stomach, the intestines, and all the other machinery which assists in the process of digestion. These two stories of apartments are separated as those of our houses are, by a floor placed just above the pit of the stomach. This floor is a large thin, flat muscle, stretched like canvas, right across the body; and it is called the diaphragm -another hard word! Never mind; but do your best to recollect it, for we shall have great need of it when we come to the lungs. If you had been born in Greece, you would have no difficulty with the word, for it is Greek for separation . It means, in fact, a
separating partition , or, as I called it just now, a floor. All this is preparatory to telling you that the liver is hooked to the diaphragm in the abdomen. It is a very large mass and fills up, by itself alone, all the right side of the lower compartment, from the top downwards, to where the bones end which protect the abdomen on each side, and which are called the short ribs. Place your hand there, and you will find them without difficulty.

Large as the liver is, it hangs suspended to a mere point of the diaphragm, and shakes about with even the slightest movement of the body. It is partly on this account that many people do not like to sleep lying on the left side, especially after a good dinner, because in this position the liver weighs upon and oppresses the stomach, like a stout gentleman asleep in a coach who falls upon and crushes his companion at every jolt of the vehicle. The liver within you produces, then, the same effect that a cat, lying on the pit of your stomach would do, and the result is that you have the nightmare.

The liver is of a deep-red color. It is an accumulation of excessively minute atoms, which, when united, form a somewhat compact mass, and within each of which there is a little cell, invisible to the naked eye, where an operation of the highest importance to our existence is mysteriously carried on. It appears a very simple one, it is true, yet hitherto it has baffled all attempts at explanation. Listen, however; the subject is well worthy your careful attention, whether it can be explained or not, and we must look back to take it up from thebeginning.

I told you about the thousand workmen constantly busied in every part of our bodies, who call on the blood without ceasing for "more, more." You will remember further that it is to enable the blood to supply these constant demands, that we require food.

This being understood, it is not difficult to see why we grow; the difficulty is, rather, to explain why we do not continue to grow.

Consider, for instance, the quantity of food you have eaten during the last year. Picture to yourself all the bread, meat, vegetables, fruits, cakes, &c., piled upon a table. Put a whole year's milk into a large earthenware pan, all the sweetmeats into a large jar, all the soup into a great tureen, and see what a huge heap you will have collected together. Then try to recollect how much you have increased in size with all this nourishment, which has entered your body. But reckoning in this way-even supposing the little workmen had used only a half or even a third of the materials in question, and rejected the rest as refuse-you would have to stoop in order to get in at the door; and as for your papa, whose heap must have been bigger than yours, his case would be desperate indeed; and yet he has not grown at all!

This is very curious, and I dare say you have never thought about it before.

Do you know the story of a certain lady called Penelope, who was the wife of Ulysses, a very celebrated king of whom the world has talked for the last 3000 years-thanks to a poet called Homer, who did him the honor of making him his hero! The husband of Penelope had left her for a long time to go to the wars, and as he did not return, people tried to persuade her to marry again. For peace and quiet's sake, she promised to do so when she should have finished a piece of cloth she was weaving, at which she worked all day long. They thought to get hold of her very soon, but her importunate lovers were disappointed; for the faithful wife, determined to await the return of her husband, unwove every night the portion she had woven during the day; and I leave you to judge what progress the web made in the course of a year!

Now, every part of our bodies is a kind of Penelope's web, with this difference-that here the web unravels at one end as fast as the work progresses at the other. As the little masons put new bricks to the house on one side, the old ones crumble away on another-in this manner the work might go on forever without the house becoming bigger; while, on the other hand, the house is always being rebuilt. People who are fond of building, as some are, would quite enjoy having such a mansion as this on hand!

At your early age, my love, fewer bricks drop out than are added, and this is why you grow from year to year. At your papa's age, just the same number perish and are replaced; and therefore he continues the same size, although in the course of the year he swallows three times his own weight of food. But when I say this, do not suppose it is an offensive remark, or that I think him either too little a man, or too great an eater; seeing that there are 365 days in the year, and that a quart of water weighs two pounds: I need not say more!

But the next question is, what becomes of all the refuse which this perpetual destruction produces?

What becomes of it? Have you forgotten our steward who looks after everything? He is a more active fellow than I have represented him! To the office of purveyor-general he adds that of universal scavenger. But in the latter department he obtains help. Wherever he passes along, troops of little scavengers press forward, like himself always busy; and while he holds out a new brick to the mason as he hurries by, the little scavenger slips out the old one and conveys it away. The history of these scavengers is a very curious one, and we shall have to speak about it a little further on. They are minute pipes, i.e. ducts , spread all over the body, which they envelope as if with fine net work. They all communicate together, and end by emptying the whole of their contents into one large canal, which, in its turn, empties itself into the great stream of the blood. Imagine all the drains of a great town flowing into one large one, which should empty itself into the river on which the town was built, and you will have a fair idea of the whole transaction. What the river would in such a case be to the town, the blood is to the body-the universal scavenger, as I said before. But you will ask further, What does the blood do with all this?-a question which brings us back once more to the liver.

You must have seen, just now, that the pockets of our dear steward would be rapidly overloaded, were he to keep constantly filling them with the old worn-out materials which the builders rejected, unless he had some means of emptying them as he went along. Accordingly, a wise Providence has furnished the body, on all sides, with clusters of small chambers or cells, in which the blood deposits, as he goes by, all the refuse he has picked up, and which makes its exit from the body sometimes in one way, sometimes in another. Now, the cells of the liver are among these refuse-chambers. One may even consider them as some of the most important ones. When the blood has run its course through the lower compartment, I mean the abdomen , it