Green Fruit

     Each morning at breakfast we find ourselves throwing seeds away from the fruit we eat.  So I started putting some of them into pots to see what the Lord would do with them.

 

 

 

  Several Kiwi seeds came up and some died away but there is still one left.  It amazes me what some plants will do with so little sunlight when you know how important it is and that they are from a country that gives them sun all year round. 

 

 

      

 

 

 

 

But of course, they do require more if they are ever to have fruit grow on them.  They have a broad fuzzy leaf.

 

 

 

 

 







 "The Liver."



 "I want to give you a little talk in regard to the work of the liver. I am not trying to give you any systematic course upon digestion. I can simply give a few suggestions here and there, hoping to get you so much interested in these subjects that you will study them up yourselves. the liver stand between us and death. it is a very narrow line which at the liver divides between life and death. It is one of the most interesting organs of the body. Various organs are lacking in different animals; but all animals have a liver, except, perhaps, some of the very lowest. Some animals have no stomach, others no kidneys or spleen, and still others can live when their lungs are removed, but all have livers.   

The reason the liver is so important is that it has so many important things to do. In the first place, it secretes the bile. this acts upon the food as soon as it leaves the stomach, performing one of the most important functions in the process of digestion. If the food should be thrown into the system without the action of the secretions of the liver, it would poison the body. The circulation is arranged in such a way that the blood passes to the liver to be purified of poisons before it passes into the general circulation. When the blood is first formed from the food, it is not fit to pass into the tissues of the body. So it passes to the liver to be purified. the liver takes the poison from the blood and stores it up, unless there should be such quantities that it could not take care of them; then they must go into the blood, and the person becomes bilious, and perhaps gets Bright's disease.  

There are poisons forming all the time in the body, from the use of the various organs. The using of the brain and the muscles form poisons, and the liver stands ready to take them. In every little drop of blood there are millions of blood corpuscles, and in the body there are ten pounds of blood. These corpuscles are dying all the while. One corpuscle only lives about six weeks; so you see there are millions of them dying every moment, and the liver is a great cemetery where they are buried. But it makes good use of these dead corpuscles. Not a particle is wasted. In Chicago and other large cities, there are men who go about the city and gather up all the dead dogs, and cats, and horses, etc. which they can find, and take them to a place where the whole animal is rendered and utilized for some purpose or another. The skin is used for leather, the bones for bone-black, the flesh for fertilizer, the fat for soap, the hoofs for glue, etc.    

So the liver converts into some use all the little dead corpuscles buried in it. the coloring matter is saved for the hair and the eyes, the potash for bile, which thus helps to digest the fats.  

A very important part of digestion is done by the liver. The starch, which has been converted into sugar by the saliva and gastric juice, is converted back into starch by the liver. Instead of this being a needless process, it is a wise provision which natures makes for future needs. Just as starch is put into the grain of wheat or kernel of corn for the little plant to live on by and by, so the liver stores up food in the form of starch and doles it out to the system from hour to hour to apply necessary heat and force. 

Another important work which the liver does in protecting the body is to store up metallic poisons, such as lead, zinc, arsenic, antimony, iron, mercury, etc. When taken into the body, these substance are captured by the liver and held back from entering the system at large, so that unless taken in very large quantities, the body is protected from their poisonous influence.  

Lastly, I wish to mention another function of the liver, the most important of all, whereby it protects the body from the constantly impending danger of poisoning; namely, its antiseptic property, by means of which it destroys organic poisons - nicotine, the poison of tobacco, strychnia, and vegetable drugs of all sorts being largely destroyed by the liver. This is the reason why only half so large a dose is required if morphia is administered hypodermically as when taken by the stomach. When taken by the stomach, the liver destroys half. The same is true with reference to poisons produced in the stomach and intestines. Decomposition taking place in the alimentary canal is the chief source of the poisons dangerous to life, against which we are protected by the liver.    

In many stomachs the food habitually sours, sometimes actually decays, or rots, and becomes very poisonous. It becomes so bad you can even smell it in the breath. The tongue in such cases is covered with germs, which if planted upon a potato, would soon cover it, and have the same bad smell as the breath. Only think of it! The tongue has about six square inches of surface. The same state of things exists all the way down, over several square feet of surface. See what a state of things the bad breath and coated tongue indicate, and what a work the liver has to do to save the life of a person in such a state as this. A bilious man is intoxicated! He is in a condition similar to that of the drunken man. An intoxicated man is simply a poisoned man; and so is the man with the bad breath and the coated tongue. The liver could not destroy all the poison that had been taken into the stomach or formed there, and it has simply passed out into the blood.  

We may take food that is already poisonous, such as cheese, for instance. A very small piece of cheese contains millions of germs and germ poisons. It is simply decayed milk.   

But says one, "I have eaten cheese all my life, and it never hurt me." If you have not been able to notice the injurious effects of it, it is because your liver has been able to destroy the poison. These injurious practices may sometimes be carried on for a long time, but there comes a time by and by when the over-worked system fails, and the health is gone."





February 11, 1895 N/A, GCB 92