Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1886 — MUTILATED MANKIND. [ARTICLE]

MUTILATED MANKIND.

Bow Men Live with One Organ or One Member—Strange Malformations. “Yoxrmay be surprised,” said a physician, “to know how many men enjoy the functions of but one organ and have the service of but one member where nature gave them two. The man with one leg, one arm, one eye, or one ear is familiar enough; at least 300,000 such unfoitunates came out of the civil war, while the trenchant locomotive wheel, the incisive buzz-saw, and the premature blast go on from day to day, lopping off limbs and blowing away fragments of the human frame at the rate of many thousand a year. These dismemberments are borne by the victims and are risible to the world because of the failure of efforts to disguise them, although the cork leg and wooden hand afford some slight concealment. But there are thousands of men whose internal organisms have been robbed of their parts without leaving the least exterior evidence. By that I mean so far as general observation goes, for, with the great advance of diagnostics, all faults of nature are revealed to the practiced eye. “A large number of the organs of the body perform their duties in pairs, harmoniously rendering tribute to the economy of the system. It would seem that the loss of one would entail the destruction of the other and result in that impediment of the vital functions called death. Such a supposition is erroneous. I know of many cases where men are enjoying comparative health with only one lung. The other has disintegrated with disease and been borne away in the circulation or ejected in coughing. The cavity has been filled in by a collapse of the membranes and the accretion of adipose tissues and the subject lives. Hundreds of men live through declining years with but one kidney. Dissipation or exposure has induced the fatal Bright’s disease or diabetes, and in its progress one of the assailed organs has passed away. Under such conditions health, or even comfort, cannot be enjoyed. It frequently occurs that men survive the paralysis or extraction of the upper lobe of the brain, which governs thought. Although the subject be utterly unconscious, the centers of the sensor and motor nerves, which hold the key to the mysterious essence called life, remain and he exists. He must, however, shortly die of inanition. The gastric functions for many people are performed by one lobe of the liver. I have known of a few instances where, in desperate cases of hernia, a patient has outlived for many weeks the removal of half the intestines. Countless persons are deaf in one ear. Any number have but one tonsil, while many have lost their sense of touch in members where the companion power of motion is preserved. The scriptural sage was certainly right when he said that we were fearfully and wonderfully made, and for all that the man with the solitary lung, the unique eye or the singular leg is as much a part of God’s kingdom as we are.— Chicago News.