The Nature of Man: Studies in Optimistic Philosophy

I have quoted only two out of many similar cases. How- ever, apart from surgical evidence, there exists proof of the uselessness of the large intestine in man. The best argu- ment in favour of the proposition may be drawn from the case of a woman who for thirty-seven years discharged the waste matter from the alimentary canal through an intestinal fistula. The latter had opened spontaneously, as the result of an abscess seated on the right side of the abdo- men. Her complaint, however, had not prevented her from marrying, from bearing three children, nor from pursuing an arduous calling. The person in question, who was a workwoman in Varsovie, was examined by a surgeon, M. Ciechomski,J thirty-five years after the establishment of

the fistula. The surgeon proposed to operate, huping to restore her to the normal condition, and the woman con- sented. However, when the abdominal cavity was opened, it appeared that the large intestine had atrophied along the whole length, from the caecum to the rectum ; the inner orifice of the fistula had passed into the digestive tract above the caecum, opening into the small intestine. In the circumstances it was impossible to close the fistula, and the surgeon had to close up the abdominal wall, leaving the patient in her former condition. The woman recovered rapidly, and continued her usual mode of life. She came under observation again two years later, but since then had been lost sight of. The fact that a human being was capable of carrying on an apparently normal life for thirty years in the absence of a large intestine is good proof that the organ in question is not necessary to man, although it has not yet become rudimentary. In this case again, to find the useful stage of the structure, we have to go to our remote ancestors.

The large intestine is much better developed in most herbivorous mammals than it is in carnivorous forms. Although it is useless in the digestion of animal food, it has an undisputed importance in the digestion of vegetable matter. It has a very large calibre in herbivorous creatures, and the voluminous cavity contains quantities of microbes which are able to digest cellulose. As cellulose is a material that resists the ordinary processes of digestion, it is easy to see the advantage derived from the harbouring of the microbes. It is more than probable that in the horse, the rabbit, and in some other mammals, that live exclusively on grain and herbage, the large intestine is necessary k r normal life.

function similar to that of the urinary bladder. The urine, which is being secreted continuously by the kidneys, accu- mulates in the large reservoir provided by the bladder. Similarly the waste matter from the processes of digestion accumulate in the large intestine and remain there for a longer or shorter period. In studying the natural history of the large intestine, it it striking that this portion of the gut is well developed only among mammals. These animals, for the most part, lead an extremely active terrestrial life. Most of them have tc move about very quickly, the predacious forms in pursuit of their prey, the herbivorous forms to escape from their enemies. In such a mode of life, the need to stop in order to empty the intestines would be a serious disadvantage, and the possibility of retaining the dejecta in a large reser- voir would be very useful.*

Such are the causes that have determined the growth of the large intestine among mammals. Birds, which live, so to speak, in the air, and which do not need to arrest their locomotion in order to void their excreta, have no large intestine. Reptiles and amphibia, although they live a terrestrial life, do not require a voluminous large intestine, and such is not found among them. These animals do not have a fixed temperature ; they are what we know as " cold- blooded," and in consequence are small eaters. Most of them are sluggish, and do not lead an active existence like that of mammals.

In the legacy acquired by man from his animal ancestors, there occur not only rudimentary organs that are useless or harmful, but fully developed organs equally useless. The * This topic is discussed at length in my lecture, published in the Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philo- sophical Society, 1901, vol. XLV., note 5, large intestine must be regarded as one of the organs possessed by man and yet harmful to his health and his life. The large intestine is the reservoir of the waste of the digestive processes, and this waste stagnates long enough to putrefy. The products of putrefaction are harmful. When faecal matter is allowed to remain in the intestine, as in cases of constipation, a common complaint, certain products are absorbed by the organism and produce poisoning, often of a serious nature. Every one knows that a high temperature may be the result of constipation in women after child- birth, or in patients recovering from an operation. This is due to an absorption of substances produced by the microbes of the large intestine. Similar products may be the cause of an attack of acne or of other skin diseases. In fine, the presence of a large intestine in the human body is the cause of a series of misfortunes. The organ is the seat of many grave diseases, among which dysentery is notable. In some tropical climates dysentery is a serious scourge. According to Rhey,* it is " the greatest danger to which a European is subjected in Tonkin. It is responsible for more than 30 per cent, of the deaths caused by disease." European troops pay it a large annual toll in the colonies of the French and English.

Malignant tumours seem to display a predilection for this region of the digestive tract. Thus, among 1148 cases of cancer of the alimentary tract recorded in the Prussian hospitals in 1895 and 1896, 1022, or 89 per cent., affected the large intestine, including the rectum and caecum. | The small intestine is the only part of the digestive tract that is indispensable, and it is attacked to a much smaller extent, providing only n per cent, of the cases of intestinal cancer. The probable explanation of these facts is that the contents of the gut remain in the small intestine a shorter time than in the large.

Stagnation is a familiar cause -of disease, and is the pro- bable cause of the frequency of cancer of the stomach. Of I0>537 cases of cancer of all parts of the digestive tract recorded in the Prussian hospitals in the same period, 4288, or more than 40 per cent., affected the stomach. The latter organ is one that the human body would do well to be rid of. It is not so useless as the large intestine, since it is the chief seat of digestion of albuminous substances, but the small intestine could take its place. Moreover, cases are known in which surgeons have removed cancerous stomachs. The results of such operations were favourable, to the ex- tent that the patients survived and were able to a.bsorb sufficient nourishment. They had to eat rather more frequently, and performed the processes of digestion by means of the secretions of the small intestine and pancreas.

It is not surprising to find so many instances of useless or harmful organs in the alimentary tract. Our ancestors were creatures that fed on crude and rough materials, such as wild plants and unprepared flesh. Man has learned to cultivate plants that are digested easily, and to prepare his meats in such a fashion as to be readily digested. The organs that were adapted to the mode of life of the animal predecessors of man have become to a large extent super- fluous. Many creatures that have found the opportunity of obtaining their nutriment in a highly digestible condition have lost, more or less completely, the digestive organs. Many parasites are instances of this, as for example the tape-worms, which live in the human digestive tract, bathed

by a nutritive fluid which they absorb directly ; they have lost the digestive tract completely. In the case of man such an evolution has not occurred, and there remains in the body a harmful organ like the large intestine. In consequence, it is impossible for him to take his nutriment in the most perfect form. If he were only to eat substances that could be almost completely absorbed, the large intestine would be unable to empty itself, and serious complications would be produced. A satisfactory system of diet has to make allowance for this, and in consequence of the structure of the alimentary canal, has to include in the food bulky and indigestible materials such as vegetables.

At this point I may refer to a topic of considerable general interest. Animals, in the choice of food for themselves or for their young, are guided by a blind and innate instinct. As I have shown in my second chapter, creatures like the fossorial wasps select only particular species of spiders or insects. Instinct directs them to the kind of food best suited to the wants of their progeny. Bees are attracted by the sweet juices of flowers ; the silkworm instinctively devours the leaves of the mulberry and rejects most other plants. In higher animals, instinct plays the chief part in the choice of food. The difficulty of getting rats to eat poisoned food is well known ; an instinct warns them of the danger of the material offered to them. In the same way dogs refrain from food that has been poisoned.

Every one has seen the minute attention bestowed by a monkey on food before beginning to eat it. It turns over what is offered, smells it carefully, cleans it, and before beginning to eat, subjects it to an examination that seems to us ridiculous. Monkeys often throw away food without even biting it. None the less, in spite of an instinct so highly developed, monkeys poison themselves with all sorts of dangerous substances, even when these exhale a strange odour. I have seen monkeys die poisoned by the phos- phorus of matches, or even by iodoform which they had contrived to steal.

In the case of man, aberrations of instinct in the choice of food are common. As soon as babies begin to walk, they lay hold of everything and try to eat it. Bits of paper, lumps of sealing-wax, the mucous matter from the nose, all appear to them to be things to eat. Constant guard has to be kept to prevent them from doing themselves an injury. Fruits and berries they cannot resist. Cases of poisoning very naturally are extremely frequent, and as every one must know of instances, I shall mention only a single case. " Messrs. Beadle and Sons, oil manufacturers at Boston, had thrown out, from the door of their estab- lishment, a quantity of castor beans that were decayed and useless. Some children playing in the street mistook the seeds for pistachio nuts, and shared them with their friends. All the children seem to have eaten of them, with the result that more than seventy showed serious symptoms of poisoning." *

The consumption of ergotised rye and of maize con- taminated with certain leguminous plants (Lathyrus) fre- quently produces epidemics of poisoning without instinct intervening to protect the victims. While the large intestine, acting as an asylum of harmful microbes, is a source of intoxication from within, the aberrant instinct of man leads him to poison himself from without with alcohol and ether, opium and morphia. The wide- * Stillmarck, in " Arbeiten des pharmacologischen Institutes zu Dorpat," vol. III., p. no, 1889.

spread results of alcoholism show plainly the prevalent existence in man of a want of harmony between the instinct for choosing food and the instinct of preservation. The digestive apparatus, then, affords abundant proof of the imperfection and disharmony of our nature. More- over, there are many other proofs, as I shall show in the chapters to follow. Remarks on the disharmonies in the human organs of sense and perception. — Rudimentary parts of the reproductive apparatus. — Origin and function of the hymen

THE digestive organs are not alone amongst the parts of the human body in exhibiting a greater or lesser dishar- mony. More than fifty years ago, a great German physio- logist, Johannes Muller, showed that although the human eye was regarded as a very perfect organ, its power of correction for aberration of light was poor. Helmholz, another famous German man of science, stated that the optical study of the eye brought complete disillusion. " Nature," he said, " seems to have packed this organ with mistakes, as if with the avowed purpose of destroying any possible foundation for the theory that organs are adapted to their environment." Not only the eye, but the other organs by means of which we are conscious of the outside world, present natural disharmony. Therein lies the cause of our want of certainty about the sources of our percep- tions. Memory, the faculty that registers our mental processes, becomes active much later than other faculties lodged in the brain. If the new-born human child were

relatively as well developed as the young guinea-pig, it is probable that we should know far more as to the history of our consciousnees of the external world. But without lingering over the disharmonies in our senses and faculties, I shall pass at once to a consideration of the apparatus for maintaining the species. I have shown that the alimentary tract, the chief organ involved in the maintenance of the individual life, affords no proof of the theory that human nature is perfect. Is it the case that the organs of reproduction give a better result ? When I wished to describe the most perfect examples of harmony to be found amongst plants, I chose the mechanism by which fertilisation is accomplished in flowers. The persistence of the species is secured, in the case of flowers, by a marvellous series of structures and functions.

Is the maintenance of the human species similarly pro- vided for ? A detailed investigation of the male and female human reproductive organs shows that these contain parts of diverse origin. The apparatus contains portions of extremely ancient origin, and portions that have been acquired recently. The internal organs display traces of a remote hermaphroditism. In the male, there occur traces of the female apparatus, rudiments of the uterus and fallo- pian tubes. In the female, on the other hand, rudiments of the male structure persist. These traces date very far back in the history of the race, for they occur also in most other vertebrates. The facts seem to indicate that, at a very remote period, the ancestral vertebrates were herma- phrodite, and that they became divided into males and females only gradually, still retaining in each sex traces of the other sex. Such traces occur frequently, even in adult man, in the form of rudimentary organs (known as the

organs of Weber, of Rosenmiiller, and so forth). The rudiments not only are functionless but sometimes, as fre- quently happens with atrophied structures, form the start- ing-point of monstrous growths, or of tumours that interfere with health. Thus the hypertrophy of a part of the male prostate gland (the organ of Weber) brings about the forma- tion of a uterus masculinus, and so produces a sort of abnormal hermaphroditism. The rudimentary organs in the male reproductive apparatus frequently are the starting- points of hydatid cysts. In the female, cysts such as those of the parovaria are produced by the proliferation of rudi- mentary structures. These, although usually benign, not infrequently become malignant. Lawson Tait,* a cele- brated English surgeon, has published a case of this kind. He removed from a young woman a parovarian cyst that was apparently benign, but in six weeks symptoms of cancer arose, and the patient died of cancer in three months.

A comparison of the rudimentary organs in the human reproductive apparatus with those in the similar structures of lower animals, shows that many relics have degenerated further in man than in other animals. Thus the duct of the embryonic kidney (known as the Wolffian body) is of rare occurrence in adult man, although it is retained through- out life in the case of some herbivorous animals, in which it is known as Gaertner's duct. There are, however, many rudimentary organs in the human reproductive apparatus, organs that are always useless and not infrequently more or less harmful to health and life.

Alongside organs which have been useless from time immemorial, the reproductive system of man possesses structures of recent acquisition. These deserve special * The case is quoted in Pozzi's " Traite de Gynecologic/' p. 714, attention, as it might have been supposed that in them would have been found special instances of adaptation to the reproductive function. I have already referred (chap, iii.) to the discussions that have taken place over the simian origin of man. All attempts to demonstrate the presence in the human brain of parts that were absent in the simian brain have failed. It is a curious fact that man displays a more marked differ- ence from monkeys in the structure of the reproductive system than in the structure of the brain. There is no os penis in man. This bone, which facilitates intromission, occurs in many vertebrates, not only among rodents and carnivora, which are widely separated from man, but in many monkeys, and most notably in anthropoid apes.* For some reason impossible to establish, man has lost this bone. It may be that certain ossifications of most rare occurrence f may represent an atavistic inheritance from our remote ancestors.

In the male sex the difference between man and the anthropoid ape is the loss of an organ ; in the female sex it is the acquisition of an organ. The hymen, the physical indication of virginity, is peculiar to the human race. That organ would serve the purpose of those disputants who make every effort to discover the existence of a structure peculiarly human, far better than the posterior lobe of the brain, or the hippocampus minor. Bischoff $ has determined its absence in the anthropoid apes, and his result has been

* Crisp, " Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London," p. 48, f Lenhossek, in Virchow's "Archiv. fiir pathologische Anatomie," vol. XL., p. i. confirmed by other observers. Deniker * failed to find it either in the foetal gorilla or in the young gorilla. In the case of the foetus of the gibbon, he found a slight ele- vation round the entrance to the vagina " which might be homologised with the hymen," f but which, however, was not the membrane in question. Deniker J himself decided that the " membrane was absent in anthropoid apes at all ages." Weidersheim, in his summary of the organisa- tion of the human body,§ also sets down the fact that " in monkeys a hymen is not present."

The fact that this structure appears late in the develop- ment of the female foetus bears out the supposition that it has been acquired recently by the race. According to several observers, who agree in this matter, the membrane does not develop until at least the nineteenth week of foetal life. Although organs very ancient in origin, and now become degenerate rudiments, may be useless, it is to be expected that an organ of recent appearance and still in a progressive condition, would have an important function. Of what utility is this membrane to a woman ? \Yiedersheim || remarks that its function has not been made out.

The hymen sometimes plays a large part in family and social relations, and, regarded as the evidence for virginity, has had moral significance bestowed on it. A minute examination of this structure is frequently a part of the judicial procedure in cases of supposed rape and so forth. The destruction of the hymen has led to the death of many hundreds of men and women. logical function of this structure that is interesting. It seems impossible to conclude otherwise than that in existing races it has practically no functional value. Its atrophy as the result of sexual congress not only is no bar to sexual relations, but removes an unpleasant impediment. In many races the structure is removed as soon as possible. In some parts of China it is destroyed as part of the toilet of young children, and indeed many Chinese physicians are ignorant of its existence. A similar state of affairs occurs in some parts of India. In Brazil, among the tribe of Machacuras, virgins, in the European sense, do not exist, for the mothers destroy the hymen in female children soon after birth. In Kamchatka the aborigines regard it as disgraceful to be married with the hymen intact, and the mothers operate on their daughters.* Among other races, again, the disagreeable duty of defloration is assigned to special persons. Among the natives of the Philippines there formerly existed well-paid public officials the duty of whom was to destroy the virginity of the girls and so to make marriage pleasanter for the husbands. A similar custom occurs among the inhabitants of New Caledonia, and Moncelon states that there virginity is held in little esteem. " I have proof of the curious circumstance," he wrote, " that when a husband shrinks from destroying the virginity of his wife, he employs some one from a regular profession to take his place."

Such examples, selected from amongst many, may be taken as proof that even such a peculiar and recently acquired organ has not a physiological use. On the other hand, especially among Christians and Mahomedans, the existence of the hymen in an intact condition is regarded as very important. The ancient Jews began to set a high value on virginity. According to the old Mosaic law, if, at the time of her marriage, a young girl were found to be no longer a virgin, " Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she .die ; because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house" (Deut. xxii. 21). The religions that have sprung from Judaism have retained this old view of virginity, although in an attenuated form. Among some Christian peoples, material proofs of virginity at the time of marriage are demanded, and among some Mahomedans such proofs are exhibited to friends and relations on the day after marriage. However, the actual defloration is not always left to the husband, but among Arabs and Copts and amongst the natives of Egypt, the operation is. performed by a specially selected matron.*

It is plain, then, that this membrane is of no direct service in the sexual process. It may even give rise to more or less serious misfortune. Thus, when it is unusually rigid, the adjacent peritoneum may be torn and the results may be disastrous. Occasionally the rupture of an abnormally vascular membrane may give rise to bleeding of a prolonged and even fatal character.! Moreover the membrane is a frequent seat of ulcers, specific or otherwise. J

I have already mentioned that among some races a rigorous toilet involves the destruction of the hymen. It is plain that the existence of the membrane interferes with strict hygiene of the vagina, especially at the periods. Probably some blood is retained by the membrane and furnishes a soil for microbes that may be dangerous to health. It is quite possible that certain forms of anaemia, as for instance the chloranaemia of virgins, may be produced by microbal growth. This would easily explain why marriage is the readiest cure for such anaemia, as marriage involves destruction of the membrane, and so makes possible the complete discharge of fluid from the vagina.*

What then can be the meaning of this organ, useless as it is for the sexual functions, sometimes dangerous to health, an organ that is no ancestral heritage and that must be destroyed by the act of sexual union ? Formerly, when it was accepted that characters acquired in individual life could be transmitted to offspring, the question was asked as to why this membrane had not disappeared. The instance was one of those which helped to overthrow the dogma of the inheritance of acquired characters.

Although it is useless to existing man, this organ may yet come to be explained by science. As yet we have to fall back on suppositions. The hypothesis which seems most probable is that in the earlier period of the existence of the human race, sexual relations were begun at a very early age, before the male organs were mature. Under such circumstances the hymen would not only not have been a barrier, but would have made congress more satisfactory. Gradually the hymen would have become dilated without being torn, until it was capable of admitting the adult organ. This hypothesis implies that in early times the membrane was not brutally torn, but that it was gradually dilated and that violent rupture is a modern necessity. In support of