length would be no indication of its real importance, inasmuch as the
vast majority of entries upon it would come under the head of
pathological curiosities, or conditions which were chiefly interesting
on account of their rareness and unusual character. With the exception
of the appendix, the gall-bladder, and hernia, these vestigial
conditions may be practically disregarded as factors in the death-rate.

In the main, when the fullest possible study and recognition have been
made of all the traces of experimentation and even of ancient failure
that are to be found in this Twentieth Century body-machine of ours, the
resulting impression is one of enormously increased respect for and
confidence in the machine and its capabilities. While they are of great
interest as indicating what the past history and experiences of the
engine have been, and of highest value as enabling us to interpret and
even anticipate certain weak spots in its construction and joints in its
armor, their most striking influence is in the direction of emphasizing
the enormous elasticity and resourcefulness of the creature.

Not only has it met and survived all these difficulties, but it is
continuing the selfsame processes to-day. So far as we are able to
judge, it is as young and as adaptable as it ever was, and just as ready
to "with a frolic welcome greet the thunder and the sunshine" as it ever
was in the dawn of history.

These ancestral and experimental flaws, even when unrecognized and
unguarded against, have probably not at any time been responsible for
more than one or two per cent of the body's breakdowns; while, on the
other hand, every process with which it fights disease, every trick of
strategy which it uses against invading organisms, every step in the
process of repair after wounds or injury, is a trick which it has
learned in its million-year battle with its surroundings.

Take such a simple thing as the mere apparently blind habit possessed by
the blood of coagulating as soon as it comes in contact with the edges
of a cut or torn blood-vessel, and think what an enormous safeguard this
has been and is against the possibility of death by hemorrhage. So well
is it developed and so rapidly does it act that it is practically
impossible to bleed some animals to death by cutting across any vessel
smaller than one of the great aortic trunks. The rapidity and toughness
of the clotting, combined with the other ancestral tricks of lowering