Changing to the 40th Edition

I found out last night that the edition I've been working with is actually a reprint of the 1901 edition. That fact was not listed anywhere on the book. It just stated a copyright year of 2010. As most of the information in the 1901 edition is outdated or incomplete, I am going to start over with the 40th Edition, which is the most recent edition, and was published in 2008.

I apologize for the error. I'm still stunned that Barnes and Noble would publish a 1901 version as a 2010 edition without stating anywhere that it was outdated. I'm going to be complaining to their corporate offices soon.

It may be a few more weeks before I get a new post up. I need to familiarize myself with the new version and its terminology, and I'm sick, so it may take a bit of time, but I'll get to it as soon as I can.

General Anatomy or Histology: The Nutritive Fluids, Part 1

The circulating fluids of the body are the blood, the lymph, and the chyle.

The Blood

An opaque, viscous fluid, salty to taste, with an alkaline reaction and peculiar odor. Its temperature is generally around 100° F, though it varies slightly in different parts of the body. It is bright red or scarlet from the arteries, and dark red or purple from the veins.

It is composed of a faintly yellow fluid (plasma or liquor sanguinis) with suspended particles (the blood corpuscles), the majority of which are colored and give blood its tint.

The blood corpuscles are mainly of two kinds: The colored corpuscles (Erythrocytes) and the colorless corpuscles (Leucocytes). A third variety, the blood platelets, are contained within the blood as well.

Colored or Red Corpuscles are shaped as biconcave circular disks. They have no nucleus but the indentation causes the appearance of a nucleus as the central part appears sometimes light and sometimes dark, and it is to these groupings that the blood owes its hue. Their size varies within a single drop of blood, but the average diameter is about 1/3200 of an inch, while their thickness is about 1/12000 of an inch. There are also smaller corpuscles (about a half to a third of that size), especially in disease. The smaller ones are scarce, however, and called microcytes.

There are between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 colored corpuscles in a cubic millimeter of blood. Each red corpuscle is composed of a colorless elastic spongework or stroma, condensed at the edges to form a membrane, and the colored contents are uniformly diffused within this.

The stroma is made mainly of nucleo-proteid and the fatty substances lecithin and cholesterin, and the colored material is mostly composed of hemoglobin (a respiratory proteid that contains iron as well as the ordinary elements of a proteid).

Hemoglobin, when removed from the body, crystallizes easily in certain circumstances, and the hemoglobin in blood will dissolve in water.

In a body, blood flows continuously, and corpuscles don’t stick to each other or the wall of the vessel, but when blood is drawn and placed on a slide without reagents, the corpuscles often collect into heaps. It is surmised that this is because of a difference in surface tension.

Red corpuscles can change their shape under pressure to adapt to vessels of various sizes, but are highly elastic and return to the original shape when the pressure is removed.

They are quickly affected by the medium they are placed in and its gravity or weight. In water they swell, lose their shape, and become spherical. Then the hemoglobin dissolves out, and the envelope becomes simply a faint circular outline.

In solutions of salt or sugar, which are more dense, they gain a stellate or crenated appearance. However, when the solution is dilluted to the same gravity as the plasma, they return to their normal shape.

An electric shock can initially produce a crenated outline, and then, if strong enough, rupture the envelope. A solution of salt or sugar with the same gravity as the plasma will separate the blood corpuscles without changing their shape.

General Anatomy or Histiology: The Animal Cell Part 2

According to recent research, most living cells also contain a minute particle (usually lying near the nucleus) which is termed the attraction particle or centrosome because it attracts the protoplasmic granules. The spherical fibrillar rows of granules surrounding the particles are known as the attraction-sphere or centrosphere, and it is usually double and connected by a spindle-shaped system of delicate fibrils called the acromatic spindle. They are mostly easily seen in young cells about to undergo division, which is believed to commence there.

The process of cell reproduction happens either through indirect or direct division. Indirect division (known as karyokinesis or karyomitosis) has been witnessed in all types of cells, and it will likely be proven that direct division is only an imperfect or abnormal karyokinesis.

Indirect cell division involves a number of complex changes to the nucleus which result in its subdivision and then the cleaving of the cell protoplasm. These changes can be grouped under the four headings of prophase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase.

1. Prophase:

The nuclear network of chromatin filaments becomes a skein or spirem, while the nuclear membrane and nucleolus disappear (Skein or Spirem, Close). The convoluted skein of chromatin divides into a number of V-shaped loops known as chromosomes (Skein or Spirem, Open). Preceding or at the same time as this, the attraction sphere splits into two parts connected by the achromatic spindle. The two centrosomes move away from each other, one toward each end of the nucleus, and the fibrils of the achromatic spindle are lengthened. The centrosomes are now situated at opposite poles of the spindle, and each is surrounded by a centrosphere from which radiate the fibrils into the investing protoplasm. A line encircling the spindle midway between the ends is called the equator, and around this the V-shaped chromosomes form a star, known as a motherstar or monaster (Motherstar, Monaster).

2. Metaphase:

Each chromosome now undergoes cleavage into two equal V-shaped halves, or daughter chromosomes. The daughter chromosomes travel in opposite directions down the fibrils of the achromatic spindle toward the centrosomes, around which they group themselves in star like figures. These two groups are then called the diaster.

3. Anaphase:

The V-shaped daughter chromosomes now form their individual skein or spirems and eventually form the network of chromatin and the nuclear membrane and nucleolus. The protoplasm begins to appear constricted around the equator of the achromatic spindle and double rows of granules are sometimes seen. The constriction continues and the original cell is gradually divided.

4. Telophase:

The cell is completely divided into two separate cells with all parts of the cells in the correct place for resting cells.

In a prickle cell, the subdivision is incomplete, leaving achromatic spindle threads bridging across the intercellular space.

Direct division is brought about by either segmentation (fission) or gemmation. In the former, the nucleus becomes constricted in the center in the form of an hourglass, then divides into two, which leads the protoplasm to do so as well. These daughter cells are smaller than the original, but grow quickly and can divide in the same manner for fast multiplication. In gemmation, a portion of the nucleus buds off or separates and becomes its own organism.

The cell wall, an occasional part of a cell, is a firmer external layer of protoplasm, sometimes thickened by chemical deposits, that forms a flexible transparent membrane.

General Anatomy or Histiology: The Animal Cell Part 1

All tissues and organs of which the body is composed were originally developed from the ovum and are made up of similar bodies, or cells. Every cell of a higher organism must contain two things: protoplasm and a nucleus. Other parts of a cell are optional, such as the cell wall or the centrosphere.

Protoplasm, also called cytoplasm, is composed chiefly of things of proteid nature, and is of a semi-fluid, viscous substance. It appears either as a hyaline (homogeneous and clear) substance, also known as spongioplasm, or exhibits a granular appearance due to fact that protoplasm consists of a honeycombed reticulum with a homogeneous substance within its meshes (this appearance is known as hyaloplasm). Generally the appearance of granules is caused by the knots of the network being mistaken as such, but protoplasm also often contains true granules, whether of proteid nature, most likely essential to the cell, or of fat or pigment, which likely come from outside the cell. The size and shape of the meshes of spongioplasm vary between cells and within the cells, and can become a cell wall. The amount of spongioplasm and hyaloplasm varies within cells, with younger cells generally containing more hyaloplasm and older cells more spongioplasm.

Protoplasm has interesting manners of movement and nutrition. To move, it either thrusts a bit of itself outward and draws the rest of the cell toward it (known as amœboid movement), or vibrates hair-like processes from the surface of the structure to move (known as ciliary movement). It gains nutrition through attracting itself to the materials necessary to its growth and maintenance from the surrounding matter. When foreign substances come in contact with the protoplasm, they are drawn within it, and then either kept or extruded again.

The nucleus is a spherical or oval form embedded in the protoplasm and surrounded by a wall known as the nuclear membrane, whose contents are known as the nuclear substance. The size of the nucleus has no relation to the size of the cell. The nuclear substance consists of a homogeneous material likely of the same nature as the hyaloplasm of the cell and of a stroma or network of filaments arranged in a reticular manner and called the chromoplasm or intranuclear network. The filaments are called chromatin because they stain readily with certain dyes, and the homogenous substance is called achromatin because it does not. The nuclear substance also includes one or more highly refracting bodies called nucleoli, which may be considered pseudo-nucleoli (local condensations of the chromoplasm, irregular in shape) or true nucleoli (which differs in both nature and chemical composition from pseudo-nucleoli).

The nuclear substance also differs chemically from ordinary protoplasm in a number of ways: First, in containing nuclein, second in its power of resisting the action of acid and alkalies, and third in its different reaction to certain dyes.

The Book, The Contestant, The Challenge

The Book

Gray's Anatomy: This leather-bound anatomy and physiology text weighs in at an impressive 1096 pages of scintillating detail. With an original publishing year of 1858, this is the 2010 Barnes & Noble edition.


The Contestant

Grocery store cashier by day, learning enthusiast by night. A 22 year old brilliant female with very little science background but a powerful curiosity.


The Challenge

Rewrite Gray's Anatomy in a more accessible manner without losing the content.


AND SO THE CHALLENGE BEGINS...