Wisdom of the Body

Doctors know that if given rest, proper food and ease of mind 90 per cent or more of their patients get well. The organs of the body have an amazing reserve. When a man suffers from tuberculosis of the lungs, part of the lung tissue is destroyed, but he has a great deal more than he needs.

More than four-fifths of the liver can be removed, and still the remaining part will carry on. A surgeon can cut and tie 30 or 40 blood vessels in the course of an operation: we have many more blood vessels than we need. Each of us has about eight metres of intestine. Up to a metre can be removed safely.

How does a surgeon dare to remove a diseased kidney? Because, when one kidney is removed, the other gradually increases its size and does the work of two. Similarly, after a heart attack the heart, usually the size of a fist, may become as big as two or even four fists. This ingenious ability has been called “the wisdom of the body.”

Another natural defence of the body is rest. If you sprain your wrist, nature “splints” it by making it so sore and stiff that you hesitate to move it. If a person is strained beyond a certain point of endurance or terror, nature says, “Take a rest,” and he faints.

If you wound your finger and festering occurs, the white corpuscles come to fight the bacteria and die in the attack. Their dead bodies make a wall of defence (pus) between the attacking bacteria on one side and the free circulation on the other. Almost every case of appendicitis would be fatal if such a wall were not built to shut in the inflammation until the surgeon operates.

God’s plan provides a great healing power in ourselves, a never-slumbering intelligence that we always have at work on our side in our fight against disease.