Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 56 — page 114: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION man heart has to fight gravity to get blood into the head and brain; and it has to fight gravity to get the blood back from lower parts of the body. Actually, even a strong heart is incapable of forcing blood up the legs sufficiently fast to keep up the circulation. You see the proof of this every time a soldier faints on parade. In order that our circulations shall stay efficient we must keep bending our legs. When we do this, the limb muscles squeeze the veins, and since the valves in these vessels prevent blood moving backwards, the blood is forced on to the heart. In the absence of this “‘muscle pump” (for example, when on parade for a long time) the blood stagnates in the leg veins and too little returns to the heart for it to be able to keep up the supply to the brain. Then we faint. When people stand for long periods every day—but not long enough to cause fainting—the continual partial stagnation of the blood in the leg veins causes, after several] years, pe: haps, varicose veins. --Man may be master of the 113 world, but he cannot go to sleep standing up, as sheep, cows and horses do; he would faint in his sleep! But perhaps the worst effects of our upright posture are found in connection with the skeleton, which has undergone profound distortion compared with that of the lower animals. In the lower animals and in very young humans—up to about three and a half months —the spine consists of a single, gentle curve from front to back. When the human baby begins to crawl about and begins to totter, the spine acquires a second curve, for- wards in the neck region. When the human baby really stands up and starts to walk, a third curve, forward in the abdominal region, appears. The spine keeps that shape for most of our lives. Notice what has happened. In place of the single, sweeping curve of the lower animals, we have now got three curves making a sort of large “‘S.’? While all this bending about has been going on, the actual verte- bre—the separate spine bones —have not greatly changed from the pattern found in a comicloooks.com