The composite man as comprehended in fourteen anatomical impersonations

Front matter

f:, H. PRATT A M , ^^ D... u n

SECOND EDITION.

AS COMPREHENDED IN

Contents

The Bony Man.

The Muscular Man.

The Arterial Man.

Preface To The First Edition

About twenty-five years ago the author was an ardent student of anatomy, and was ambitious to popularize the subject, bel ieving that an intimate knowledge of the human organism would prove to be of practical service, not only to medical men, but to people generally, and with this end in view, for a number of years, he delivered a series of popular lectures on the structure of the human body, in a considerable number of communities adjacent to the city of Chicago. The audiences were always appreciative, but the task proved too arduous to be long continued, and the hope of popularizing the subject by means of lectures at least died out, until it seemed necessary of late years, for humanity's sake, to aid in unifying the medical thought of the times.

Practical medicine has been split up into various specialties, each full of its own importance. Manual therapeutics has achieved a widespread appreciation of its own merits, and suggestive therapeutics has grown to such substantial proportions as to clamor for universal recognition, while the old, timehonored temple of medicine has industriously striven to meet the ever-changmg and increasing wants of humanity to the best of its ability. Each means of cure has its appropriate field of operation, and all possible remedial measures that have been found helpful in the healing of the sick are sorely needed in the great campaign of humanity against disease and premature decay. There should be no rivalry between the various methods of cure, but, on the contrary, they should enjoy mutual appreciation and helpfulness. This desirable state of affairs can be attained only when the nature of man, both physical and spiritual, is better understood. So long as one set of healers has a care merely for the physical part of the human being, ignoring, as far as possible, all consideration of his spiritual nature and necessities, and another set refuses to recognize the claims of man's material part, but hopes to rescue humanity from its aches and pains by purely psychological processes, sick humanity can have little hope of perfect and permanent recovery. But when the dual nature of man becomes universally recognized and the fact that, so far as his present existence is concerned, he is not a mere body nor a mere soul, but both, and that each acts and reacts upon the other in both health and disease, becomes universally appreciated, practical medicine, manual therapeutics and suggestive therapeutics can sit down in friendly counsel with some hope of successfully solving the great problem of humanity's emancipation from the thralldom of sickness and suffering.

Anatomy is a long, hard and difficult study to master, and it is usually found so dull and complicated as to be forbidding to people generally. Even the indifferent knowledge obtained on the subject by medical students is secured only by long continued, patient application. Then, too, in accordance with the methods of the various text books, the body is taken apart for purposes of observation, but the unifying of the various structures into a complete whole is left to the imagination of the student, which too frequently proves to be unequal to the task. Nor is the study of anatomy as it is now carried on by any means complete, for it ignores all consideration of the two spiritual forms, the conscious and the sub-conscious shapes without which what remains is but a corpse — a man, indeed, with the man left out. The object of these impersonations, therefore, has been threefold. First, to render the study of anatomy sufficiently simple and novel to be attractive, in hopes that it may be popularized; second, to secure recognition, on the part of those who heretofore have been inclined to overlook them, of the existence of man's spiritual parts as essential elements in all that concerns his every possible condition; third, to unify the conceptions of the various parts of the human being which are usually prone to suffer a too isolated consideration. While the impersonations have been presented in a simple and light-hearted style, for purposes of interest and easy comprehension, they will be found anatomically correct in every detail.

With the earnest hope that they may be found of some slight interest to everybody who reads them, they are respectfully surrendered for public inspection and consideration, with the assurance that if they prove to be in some degree helpful to those who are seeking acquaintanceship with the structure of the human being, it will be an easy matter to render them still more so by adding to their thoroughness and comprehensiveness. E, H. PRATT.