The New Bone-Dust Theory of Behavior, or, Is Your Elbow All It Should Be?

Guest Blogger Dept.: Which I ought to rename Robert Benchley Dept., because I have featured Benchley essays more often than those by any other writer. They are gems. Some of them don’t age well if you’re thinking in terms of historical context, but all of them endure for his masterful use of language.

                                                                                      

A LITTLE WHILE AGO, it was your teeth that were to blame for everything. And now, after you have gone and had tin-types taken of your teeth, showing them riding in little automobiles or digging in the sand, some more specialists come along and discover that, after all, it is your glands that are the secret of your mental, moral and physical well-being.

Benchley by Gluyas Williams

A book called “The Glands Regulating Personality” claims that the secretions of the various glands throughout your body determine whether you are a good or a bad boy, cheerful or agile, Republican or Democrat. Anyone singing “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow” does not face the facts squarely. The words should go: “For he has jolly good glandular secretions, which nobody will deny.”

In order to be at least two jumps ahead of the game, we are prepared to set forward another theory to take the place of the gland theory when that shall have become scratched. All enthusiasts who want to keep abreast of the times will dip right into ours now; so that when the time comes they will be able to talk intelligently on the subject.

Briefly, the facts are these:

This wonderful body which Nature has given us is made up of just dozens and dozens of bones. Oh, so many bones! If you were to start counting now and should count bones until Daddy came home to supper, you would have counted only seven or eight of them, because it is almost time for Daddy now.

In the course of time, as we go about doing our daily work, these bones rub against one another, especially in the joints. It is true that Nature has provided little cups for the bones to fit into so that they will not rub, but what good are they? None. Of all the bungling, slip-shod jobs that Nature has done (and she has done a great many in her day) the friction of one bone upon another in the human form is among the worst. The truth about this has only just begun to come out.

Now, in this constant rubbing, due to people's constantly running up and down stairs, or prancing to keep warm, or jouncing babies on their knees, it is only to be expected that a quantity of bone-dust should be gradually worn off from the bones. You can't blame the bones. It's just one of those things that are bound to happen.

This bone-dust, once it is set loose, has no place to go except to swirl along in circulation with the blood. You are either a part of a bone or you are a part of the circulation of the blood. There is no middle course. And it is this visiting bone-dust, tearing about through one's system, that determines whether or not one is to be a criminal member of society or a pianist.

For example, the joints which shed criminal-breeding bone-dust are the elbow and knee. If dust from these predominates in your system (in other words, if you bend your elbows and knees more than you bend your fingers) you will have a tendency to steal little things or perhaps kill slightly. Dark circles will appear under your eyes and your friends will begin to shun you. You will be embarrassed when called upon to meet the president of the company and will, in all probability, have no speaking voice.

A very wealthy society woman, known to all of you by name, was brought to this office for treatment for stealing trinkets from Tiffany's. Ten years ago she would have been sent to a sanitarium as an incurable kleptomaniac. She was questioned about her reflexes and it was found that she was accustomed to bend her elbow constantly, just for the fun of the thing. A transfusion was made of the bone-dust of a young wolf who had no elbows, and in a few weeks the patient was as good as new. She has never had a recurrence of her throat trouble.

Thus it will be seen that the basis of our whole social structure today lies in the friction of the bones in our body and probably will lie there until Fall, when something else will be found to take the blame.

– Life, May 25, 1922, p. 8; collected in Chips Off the Old Benchley, Harper & Brothers, 1949, p. 1