HUNDREDS of years ago the sweet Psalmist of Israel testified that he was fearfully and wonderfully made. Since that utterance was made hundreds of the acutest minds have been studying the human body and have brought to their aid marvellous instruments which have greatly helped them in their studies and yet after all the discoveries they have made they need not like Alexander sit down and weep because they have no more worlds to conquer. In a work written by a doctor who has been profoundly impressed by his study of the human body, he says: “One thing the contemplation should make us sure of, and that is, it is not the outcome of blind development, but the handiwork of a Designer of supremest skill, knowledge and intelligence. . . . For intricacy of structure, or perfection of function, and for durability, there is not a man-made machine of to-day or yesterday which can even approach to rivalry with it.”
It would be impossible to give a description of more than one of the organs of the human. We have selected the heart with the purpose of calling attention to some of the wonders of this organ. Of course, it is to be clearly understood that our article deals with the physical organ and not with “the heart” in its Biblical or religious sense.*
It is the heart that pumps the blood stream through the body. In order to perform its task it is said that the heart beats 100,000 times in 24 hours and the work it does has been computed as equal to raising 50 tons one foot from the ground. Think of this wonderful organ working night and day from birth to death. Sometimes even for 100 years in a few cases.
If the heart beats 100,000 times in 24 hours, how often approximately will it beat in 100 years? These figures are not the same for old and young. When this organ ceases to beat not only is its work done but ours also.
This is how one has summed up some of the points mentioned: “There is no greater or more splendid worker in creation than your heart. Although no bigger than our closed fist, and weighing little more than half a pound, or on the average 1/150th of the whole body weight, yet in 24 hours the work it does is equivalent to raising one ton fifty feet from the ground. Nor does it sleep as the man or brain does, but, sleepless, it resumes its work next morning like a giant refreshed. Verily, it is the strong man of the body! Let me show you in various ways the enormous work it does. Feel your pulse when it beats. Suppose it is in the average of 75 per minute. How many times is that in 24 hours? One hundred thousand times—and how many per year? Forty million times. So in an average life the heart’s muscular pump beats nearly 300,000,000 times. and each time it pumps out 3 ounces of blood, which is 80 gallons or more of blood in one hour, or over 2,000 gallons in 24 hours. The heart has only 15 pints of blood to play with, that means the blood must be pumped over again. Why should it be? Because every minute or so, day and night, the blood cells must be fed with not only foodstuffs from the bowel but also with oxygen, which must be carried as often from the lungs.
Now divide the 24 hourly 2,000 gallons into 15 pints and the answer—1000 is the number of times the job of feeding and purifying is done between sunrise and sunrise. If you don’t wonder, I do. . . . The heart of a centenarian in good health, as many are, would be pumping its 3,000 millionth time. And this by a tiny muscular sac no bigger than one’s fist! The thought staggers one. Where are the metal machines that could weather 100 years?” and this is but one of the marvels of the human body and by no means the most marvellous. It was after the Psalmist acknowledged: “I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. cxxxix. 14), that he was moved to make the confession —”Marvellous are thy works.”
* Perhaps the best and soberest treatment of these Biblical terms will be found in Prof. Laidlaw’s Bible Doctrine of Man.—Editor.