Regulating the body Milieu interieur Fact and ritual Commentary

Claude Bernard metabolism

Regulating the body

• The body regulates its own oxygen supply,
• they say; complex physiological mechanisms
• try to keep temperature,
• liquid pressure, and chemical processes in balance.
• This was the finding of the famous French physiologist
• Claude Bernard, who abjured hospital practice
• and advocated the laboratory for experiments with animals,
• thus establishing the basis of medical science
• and saving countless human lives.
• If the frog and rabbit bore no resemblance to us
• then dissecting them would teach us nothing.
• Of course we have a lot to learn if we think
• that the animal teaches us all we need to know.
• Squeamish, I get faint at the sight
• of another person’s blood. Even on film.
• I can’t breathe, or maybe I breathe too much.

Milieu interieur

• Ill or in motion, the body’s akilter.
• Every tick of the clock winds it down;
• every sense and swallow pushes it off balance.
• Reactions accumulate in a dim choreography
• but the center of the dance is not the self
• but, even in sleep, a point between the body
• and the sheets.
• Listen to the breathing. Breath
• derives from spirit—for the spirit animates,
• the air that we share.
• Difficult,
• when people are rude, blind to everything
• except for their own. It can hurt
• even if one knows they are wrong.

Fact and ritual

• Dissatisfaction is inevitable
• so some anticipate failure with fervor,
• hoping, at the same time, for the best.
• No special pathology needs to be attributed;
• a worse case is always available to reassure the loser.
• Old injuries form badges of courage
• and symbols of veneration.
• The familiar rote learning of childhood—
• multiplication tables, nursery rhymes, rules of hopscotch—
• color our world with depth and warmth, unlike
• futuristic complexities that we fear to accept.
• The key element of the scientific method
• is approximation, not experiment.
• To shorten the calculation, we simplify the model.
• Predicting the weather
• or side effects of a medicine
• shouldn’t be matters of life and death.
• Making do with incomplete knowledge, inadequate
• explanations, ineffective control, we cannot be satisfied.
• But compromise is inevitable,
• and we can get used to anything.