“So that is how it happens,” Hans Castorp said.
“Something like that. Those are reactions, you know. But it is the nature of reactions and reflexes to have a reason for happening; we are beginning to suspect, we physiologists, that the phenomena accompanying emotion are really defence mechanisms, protective reflexes of the system. Gooseflesh, now. Do you know how you come to have gooseflesh?”
“Not very clearly either, I’m afraid.”
“That is a little contrivance of the sebaceous glands, which secrete the fatty, albuminous substance that oils your skin and keeps it supple, and pleasant to feel of. Not very appetizing, maybe, but without it the skin would be all withered and cracked. Without the cholesterin, it is hard to imagine touching the human skin at all. These sebaceous glands have little erector-muscles that act upon them, and when they do so, then you are like the lad when the princess poured the pail of minnows over him. Your skin gets like a file, and if the stimulus is very powerful, the hair ducts are erected too, the hair on your head bristles up and the little hairs on your body, like quills upon the fretful porcupine—and you can say, like the youth in the story, that now you know how to shiver and shake.”
“Oh,” said Hans Castorp, “I know how already. I shiver rather easily, on all sorts of provocation. Only what surprises me is that the glands are erected for such different reasons. It gives one gooseflesh to hear a slate-pencil run across a pane of glass; but when you hear particularly beautiful music you suddenly find you have it too, and when I was confirmed and took my first communion, I had one shiver after another, it seemed as though the prickling and stickling would never leave off. Imagine those little muscles acting for such different reasons!”
“Oh,” Behrens said, “tickling’s tickling. The body doesn’t give a hang for the content of the stimulus. It may be minnows, it may be the Holy Ghost, the sebaceous glands are erected just the same.”
Hans Castorp regarded the picture on his knee.
“Herr Hofrat,” he said, “I wanted to come back to something you said a moment ago, about internal processes, lymphatic action, and that sort of thing. Tell us about it—particularly about the lymphatic system, it interests me tremendously.”
“I believe you,” Behrens responded. “The lymph is the most refined, the most rarefied, the most intimate of the body juices. I dare say you had an inkling of the fact in your mind when you asked. People talk about the blood, and the mysteries of its composition, and what an extraordinary fluid it is. But it is the lymph that is the juice of juices, the very essence, you understand, ichor, blood-milk, crème de la crème; as a matter of fact, after a fatty diet it does look like milk.” And he went on, in his lively and whimsical phraseology, to gratify Hans Castorp’s desire. And first he characterized the blood, a serum composed of fat, albumen, iron, sugar and salt, crimson as an opera-cloak, the product of respiration and digestion, saturated with gases, laden with waste products, which was pumped at 98.4° of heat from the heart through the blood-vessels, and kept up metabolism and animal warmth throughout the body—in other words, sweet life itself. But, he said, the blood did not come into immediate contact with the body cells. What happened was that the pressure at which it was pumped caused a milky extract of it to sweat through the walls of the blood-vessels, and so into the tissues, so that it filled every tiny interstice and cranny, and caused the elastic cell-tissue to distend. This distension of the tissues, or turgor, pressed the lymph, after it had nicely swilled out the cells and exchanged matter with them, into the vasa lymphatica, the lymphatic vessels, and so back into the blood again, at the rate of a litre and a half a day. He went on to speak of the lymphatic tubes and absorbent vessels; described the secretion of the breast milk, which collected lymph from legs, abdomen, and breast, one arm, and one side of the head; described the very delicately constructed filters called lymphatic glands which were placed at certain points in the lymphatic system, in the neck, the armpit, and the elbow-joint, the hollow under the knee, and other soft and intimate parts of the body.
“Swellings may occur in these places,” Behrens explained. “Indurations of the lymphatic glands, let us say, in the kneepan or the arm-joint, dropsical tumours here and there, and we base our diagnosis on them—they always have a reason, though not always a very pretty one. Under such circumstances there is more than a suspicion of tubercular congestion of the lymphatic vessels.”
Hans Castorp was silent a little space.
“Yes,” he said, then, in a low voice, “it is true, I might very well have been a doctor. The flow of the breast milk—the lymph of the legs—all that interests me very, very much. What is the body?” he rhapsodically burst forth. “What is the flesh? What is the physical being of man? What is he made of? Tell us this afternoon, Herr Hofrat, tell us exactly, and once and for all, so that we may know!”
“Of water,” answered Behrens. “So you are interested in organic chemistry too? The human body consists, much the larger part of it,
