Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1885 — The Body’s Tolerance. [ARTICLE]

The Body’s Tolerance.

Sometimes a slight blow on the head has resulted in death, or, what is worse, in the permanent loss of reason. A mere scratch on the hand, dr a sliver in the foot, or a grain of dust lodging in the eye, or the tiniest fish-bone entering the windpipe, has proved fatal. Such facts may lead us to accept the poet’s statement: “The spider’s most attenuated thread is cord, is cable, to man’s hold on life.” But there is another class of facts quite as surpris-. ing that are different from these. An iron bar has been driven through the brain, with a considerable loss of brain substance, and yet no permanent harm has come to body or to mind. The fact is, while a mere prick in a part of the brain (the medulla oblongata) may cause death, the great bulk of the brain is exceedingly tolerant of many forms of injury. Even the heart is much more tolerant than is generally thought. The physician may thrust his fine instrument through it with safety. An insane woman sought to kill herself by piercing it with a hairpin, but wholly failed of her purpose, although the pin interfered with the natural movements of the heart.

A woman swallowed a paper of pins. The pins traversed various organs and tissues of the body, and yet she recovered from local inflammation. A boy was brought to the hospital insensible and nearly dead from asphyxia (want of breath). The doctor, having run a catheter down the windpipe, a piece of chestnut was coughed up. The next day there was evidence that another piece was lodged in another of the bronchial tubes., It was impossible to dislodge it. There followed all the symptoms of acute consumption (pthisis): high temperature, sweatings emaciation, copious expectoration of offensive matter and a large cavity. Yet the boy in three months returned home convalescent, and six months later the cavity disappeared.— Companion.