Part 13

HELEN: I should think there ought to be windows on all sides of his room. He can look out only one way.

MOTHER: But you see this cupola is placed on top of a tower we call the neck, which turns easily and quickly, and, besides, the whole house can “face about” in an instant, so he can look other ways than straight ahead, with no trouble.

PERCY: Why do you call the brain the master of the house, mother?

MOTHER: Because it tells the feet, hands, tongue, eyes, and all other parts of the body what to do, and they obey it. Sometimes we find a bad master in one of these beautiful houses. He tells the feet to go to a saloon. He tells the tongue to ask for beer and other kinds of strong drink. He tells the hand to lift the glass to his lips. It may be he knows he is taking poison into the house, which will make his servants, the muscles, unfit for work. Perhaps he knows, too, that the drink will hurt himself more than any other part of the body-house, for it puts him to sleep when he ought to be awake telling his servants what to do, yet he does it, and often suffers all the rest of his life for his folly.

ELMER: Does alcohol hurt the brain?

MOTHER: Surely it does. It makes the blood impure, so it can not furnish good food for the brain. It causes more blood to go to the head than ought to be there. It makes people mad, crazy, or insane.

Sometimes it brings that awful disease, delirium tremens, and then the poor master thinks his best friends are his enemies, that serpents and horrible creatures are crawling over his body, and he dies a terrible death, and goes into a drunkard’s grave. He ruins the house God gave him to live in, and finds it is true that “at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”

Children, never touch these poison drinks.

“Never put them in your mouth, To steal away your brains.”

OUR TELEPHONE SYSTEM

PERCY: Ting-a-ling! There’s the telephone bell. How strange it seems to talk to people, and hear them talk, when they are miles away!

MOTHER: But the most wonderful telephone in the world is found in the house we live in.

HELEN: Why, mother, you don’t mean to say we have wires all through our bodies, do you?

MOTHER: Not wires, but something that answers the same purpose, only it is far more perfect. You know the brain is the master of the house, and there are hundreds of muscles waiting to do what he bids them. But the brain is upstairs, safe in his own strong little room. How can he tell the fingers how to work, and the feet where to walk?

AMY: Please tell us, mother. I’m sure I don’t know.

MOTHER: Well, instead of wires we have thousands of little lines called nerves, reaching from the brain to every part of the body. They are made of matter like that in the brain, and they are so close together that you can touch no place on your body, even with the point of a pin, without touching a nerve. Messages are sent over them to the brain, and back again to the muscles. With the nerves we feel. We call it the sense of touch.

We might call the brain the “central office,” from which messages are sent, and where they come back. In the city you have seen many wires stretched on poles. Sometimes they are bound up together and covered over, making a cable like a big rope. You remember I told you there is a spinal cord or marrow running through your backbone. This is made up of many nerves, as the cable is made of many wires. There are sixty-two branch lines coiled up in it. By looking at the bottom part of the picture of the brain you will see where this large cable enters the central office. Really, the top part of the cord is a little brain itself, with a long name, which we will not trouble now to learn.

ELMER: If all the nerves come from the backbone, how do any get to the face?

MOTHER: There are some little holes in the skull, and through these twenty-four branch lines pass, carrying the nerves all over the face and head. One pair find their way to the nose, and they tell the master of the house how things smell. Another pair reach to the eyes, and tell him how things look. They are nerves of sight. There are three pairs to tell the muscles of the eye how to move. One pair passes to the ears, and are called nerves of hearing. The others are scattered all over the face, passing to the teeth, tongue, and throat, and even to other parts of the body. This picture shows the brain as the main office, the cord or cable in the back-bone, and how the branches extend to all parts of the body. Still there are thousands of smaller lines which can not be seen at all.

HELEN: And what sends the messages to and from the brain over the nerves, mother?

MOTHER: The power which sends them is called “nerve force,” though what it is even the wisest men do not know. We can stop it by pressing on the nerves, just as you can stop the current of the telegraph. We sometimes say that our leg or arm is “asleep.” If we try to move, it gives us pain, or it may be we can not move at all. One nerve runs along the back side of the arm over the elbow. If we hit the elbow, it makes the arm and hand feel numb. We say the “funny bone,” or the “crazy bone,” is hurt, but it is not the bone at all, but the nerve.

AMY: I heard a lady who is ill say she wished she had no nerves. Why do we have them?

MOTHER: I think we have already learned how useful they are to carry messages for us. We would be quite helpless without them, for the brain sends word over them every time we move any part of the body. Another reason is they watch for our welfare. If we are cut or burned, it gives us pain. We don’t like the pain, so we are more careful when we use sharp tools or go near the fire.

If you touch the hot stove, you jerk away your hand. “I’m burnt,” the finger sends word to the brain. The brain sends back the message, “Get off the stove, quick.” And to the nerves of the eye it says, “See if it is blistered.” To the face muscles, “Make up a wry face to show how badly it hurts.” To the feet and hands, “Get some cold water to put the burned finger in.” To the tongue, “Tell your mother about it.” All these messages are sent at the rate of one hundred feet a second, and the eye, face, hands, feet, and tongue all feel sorry for the burnt finger, and do all they can to help it.

Every part of the body, the bones, muscles, stomach, heart, and lungs, has these useful little nerves to let the master know when anything is wrong with them.

ELMER: Do the nerves ever get sick, mother?

MOTHER: Oh, yes, very often! Sometimes they are so ill that no message can pass over them to the brain. Then we say the person is paralyzed. A lady had her limbs paralyzed. She could not walk, or move her feet at all. One day she took a foot bath. She could not tell whether the water was cold or hot, and soon the nurse found the skin on her feet blistered, because the water was too warm. The nerves were dead, and she felt no pain at all. Pain is hard to bear, but if there were no pain, the house we live in would soon be ruined. It tells us when danger is near, and because we do not like the pain, we take care of the body. The nerves are more wonderful than any telephone or telegraph, and when you get older, you must learn all you can about them.

HELEN: The brain must have a lot of work looking after the nerves and sending so many messages over them. I don’t see how it can think of anything else.