Human anatomy describes the organization and construction of the human body, and how it is put together: how the bones are held together by ligaments, aponurotic bands, and muscles. It tells the shape of the bones, the number, and how they are made, and what they are made of. It names each organ, and describes the construction of each particular department of it. It numbers the bones, the muscles, nerves, arteries, ligaments, veins, and all that is found by the dissection of the dead body.

Every man should know enough about his own body in reference as to how it is made, and the functions or actions of the essential or principal organs, to care properly for himself, and protect himself or body from a great many poisons and surroundings that cause disease, pain, sorrow, suffering and death. Knowing this to be an essential fact, I feel that it is a duty that I owe to my fellow man, or humanity in general, to embody in this work a few important and essential anatomical ideas that are useful for man, woman and child to know.

The human skeleton is composed of 208 bones, the teeth not included, and these bones are controlled by 600 muscles, and through these bones and muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, and capillaries are very numerously distributed. There are 32 teeth in the grown person, with which we masticate, or chew, or grind ou food. These teeth are coated with a material called enamel, which, when once injured by improper habits, will never renew itself again. The teeth are not like bones. Bones, when broken, if held in position, will grow together again, solid and firm as before breaking. But not so with the teeth, which, when once injured, are, like a pane of glass, destroyed for ever. Now there are ninety-nine out of every hundred of my readers know this statement to be a fact by actual experience. Boys destroy their teeth when quite young by crushing hickory-nuts, almonds, cream nuts and pieces of ice. Cold causes sudden contraction; heat sudden expansion. The white pearly substance which covers that portion of the tooth which projects above the gum, called enamel, is admitted by all in the profession of medicine, most especially the chemical and dental professions, to be extremely susceptible to these two extremes, namely cold and heat; consequently ice, ice water, ice lemonade or anything or substance near the same temperature, should never, during health, be put in the mouth, which everybody knows is practiced or indulged in every day by hale and hearty persons; and just so soon as such substances come in contact with the teeth, they being about 98 ½ degrees of heat, the ice, or whatever it may be, being about 32 degrees, causes a sudden contraction of the enamel, causing it to contract to that degree that it cracks the enamel, and decay follows. Parents should caution their children about cracking nuts, and chewing ice, and drinking hot tea and coffee. I have known men that have been free from all such indiscretions during their life, that had their full set of teeth, thirty-two in number, free from all decay. The Indians have no need of a dentist, from the fact they do not drink hot tea and coffee. The Indian doctor has no steel forceps to crush the gum and jaw-bone, in order to extract an injured tooth, from which injury it has decayed. Their dentist is simply the strict observation of the laws of nature. If a man cuts his finger a scar will be the final result; if a man violates the laws of nature, and causes the enamel of his teeth to be cracked, or cut, the result is a scar in the form of a tooth ache, toothless gums, or false teeth. The teeth are especially intended for the mastication of food, or in words more plain, for the grinding of the food in order that the fluids of the stomach may have free access to every portion of it when it enters the stomach. When a person is eating a common meal, the salivary glands excrete eight ounces of saliva, which mingles with the food and has a special chemical property, and one special mission to perform outside of a chemical action, and that is, to oil or lubricate the bolus of food, that it may pass down the esophagus or tube that leads from the mouth to the stomach. The stomach is an organ just beneath the lower tip of the breast bone, and hangs in the shape of a half moon, with the convex surface down when not filled with food: but upon being filled with a meal of food or victuals, it turns upside down and commences to contract or relax, or, in other words, churn up the food so it is in a soft pulpy form, and at the same time mingles the gastric juice with it, which chemically separates the dross from the nutritious portion so that it may be absorbed by the little lacteals, the same as a leech sucks up blood. Hence you see how the many abuse their stomachs ignorantly, by eating and drinking between meals, which obstructs and prevents the process of digestion, and ultimately causes dyspepsia. The North American Indians were never known to be afflicted with dyspepsia, simply from the fact that their habits of eating and character of food were in accordance with the laws of nature. They never drink hot coffee, tea, whisky, wine, beer, pound cake, or pudding: but they live on plain diet, and the result is they never have dyspepsia, cancer of the stomach, and thousands of ailments that civilization is heir to and afflicted with.

The first portion of the bowels that leads from the stomach is called the duodenum. About two inches from where it connects with the stomach the bile from the liver and pancreatic fluid are emptied. These two fluids serve the purpose of converging the fatty portion of the food we eat into a saponified condition--that is, a soapy condition; both of the fluids being of an alkaline nature, and coming in contact with fat, the same chemical process occurs as does when common lye from ashes comes in contact with greases or fat in the soap kettle; and when the fatty portion of our food is thus saponified, it is ready for the lacteals of the bowels to absorb or suck up. When the nutritious portion of our food is thus absorbed it is carried into what is called the thoracic duct, which is a tube about the size of a crow's quill running up the spinal column. This tube is the medium through which our bodies receive our entire physical support. The nutrition which is absorbed by the lacteals and carried into this tube is called chyle; before it leaves the stomach it is called chyme. When it enters the thoracic duct, it is carried by it into the left subclavian vein, where it becomes blood, and is carried by the circulation to all tissues of the body, to strengthen, support, and renew them.