Personal hygiene - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 Excerpt: ...every part of the body. Red Blood Cells.--A great many tiny round bodies float in the liquid of the blood. Most of these bodies are red, and so they make the blood appear red. These red bodies are called red corpuscles, or red blood cells. Their use is to take up a part of the air of each breath, and to carry it through the body. White Blood Cells.--A few of the bodies which float in the blood are whitish or colorless, and are called white corpuscles, or white blood cells. One of their uses is to destroy disease germs which may be in the blood and flesh. Every day some disease germs are breathed into the body with dusty air, some are swallowed with food, and a few are rubbed into cuts and scratches on the skin. But most of Red Blood Cells. (Magnified.) the germs fail to grow, because the white blood cells seize them and kill them as soon as they enter the flesh. The Heart.--While the body is alive the blood is always flowing through all its parts. It is kept moving by a pump called the heart. A person's heart is about the size of his fist. It lies in the front part of the body behind the breastbone. If a hand is placed over the left side of the chest, the lower end of the heart can be felt beating against the flesh at every stroke which it makes. The heart is a double pump. Its right side pumps blood through the lungs only, but its left side pumps blood through all the rest of the body. Each side of the heart consists of two parts. The upper part has thin walls and is called an auricle. The lower part has thick walls and is called a ventricle. It does most of the work of pumping blood, for its walls are thick and strong. Heart Beats.--A man's heart beats about seventy-five times a minute, but a child's heart beats a hundred or more times a minute. When a pe...