The Cap Badges and the Insignia of the British Royal Medical Corps and the Indian Army Medical Corps reveal the Rudi-Grant Connection. The Indian Army Medical Corps was created from the British Royal Army Medical Corps.
In 1965, while I was a student of Human Anatomy at Kurnool Medical College, I had the opportunity to know about Dr. J. C. B. Grant (1886-1973), the author of Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy. The 5th Edition of his Atlas was published in 1962 and was available in India in our Medical College Library.
Born in Loanhead (south of Edinburgh) in 1886, Grant studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and graduated with an M.B., Ch.B. degree in 1908. While at Edinburgh, he worked under the renowned anatomist Daniel John Cunningham. Grant became a decorated serviceman of the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War before moving to Canada. He established himself as an ‘anatomist extraordinary’ at the University of Toronto, publishing three textbooks that form the basis of Grant’s Anatomy. The textbooks are still used in anatomy classes today, and made unforgettable memories for those who found themselves in his classes nearly a century ago. One of Grant’s many accomplishments was establishing a division of histology within the department.
As a medical student, I used Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy, the seminal work of Scottish-born Dr. John Charles Boileau Grant, who would become the chair of Anatomy at the University of Toronto in 1930 and retired in 1965.
Students continue to use Grant’s textbooks today, and for the more artistic anatomist there’s even a Grant’s Anatomy Coloring Book, published in 2018.
At the University of Toronto, Dr.McMurrich, Chair of Anatomy was succeeded as chairman in 1930 by Dr. John Charles Boileau Grant. Dr. Grant wrote three text books, of which “An Atlas of Anatomy” (published in 1943) rapidly gained international prominence and is still, one of the most widely used anatomical atlases in the world. It is now known as “Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy” and is in its tenth edition. The atlas was based on a series of elegant dissections done either by Grant or by others under his supervision. Many of these dissections are currently housed in Grant’s Museum at the University of Toronto.
The Rudi-Grant Connection is about knowing the man, the building blocks and the structural units and organization of the human body. To defend the human existence, the Rudi-Grant Connection lays the emphasis on knowing the person who is at risk apart from knowing the agent posing the risk.
THE IDENTITY OF MULTICELLULAR HUMAN ORGANISM:
Daniel John Cunningham was born on 15 April 1850 in Scotland. After his initial schooling at his home town, Crieff, he took up the study of medicine at the University of Edinburgh and passed with honours. He is best known for the excellent series of dissection manuals, namely Cunningham’s Dissection Manuals. Cunningham’s Manual of Practical Anatomy has provided me the learning tools to know and understand Man’s External and Internal Reality and its Identity as described by Cells, Tissues, Organs,and Organ Systems.
I learned about the human body while dissecting the body in a systematic manner. The Manual of Practical Anatomy which guides us through this entire process was published in England. The author Dr. Daniel John Cunningham prepared the Manual while dissecting cadavers of British or Irish citizens. He had never encountered cadavers of Indian citizens. At Kurnool Medical College, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, India, where I was a student, the Department of Anatomy obtains dead bodies from Government General Hospital Kurnool and most of the deceased are the poor, illiterate, and uneducated people of that region. None of the deceased had the chance to know this man called Cunningham and Cunningham had no knowledge about the existence of these people who arrive on our dissection tables. But, as the dissection of the human body proceeds, inch, by inch, we recognize the anatomical parts as described by Cunningham. The manual also lists some anatomical variations and we very often exchange information between various dissection tables and recognize the variations mentioned. The dissections also involve slicing the organs and studying them, both macroscopically, and microscopically. We did not miss any part of the human body. So what is the Identity of this Human person or Human subject? How does the living Human organism maintain its Identity and Individuality? Apart from the Cultural Traditions of India, several Schools of Religious Thought claim that the Human Individual and its Identity is represented by Human Soul. Where does this soul exist in the human body? What is the location if the soul is present in the living person? Does man have a soul?
Man can see Light. Can man see God?
The Material Basis of Spirituality Science. The Man is Spiritually Blind
Man inclines to use his mental faculties of thought and introspection to formulate theories about God. Bhagat Namdev ji asks, “How could I make You (GOD) an object of thought?” However, man continues to claim intellectual power to gain Knowledge or Wisdom of God while man’s physical existence in Natural World depends upon Sense Perceptions that are not true. For example, man needs visual experience of Sunrise and Sunset without concern for Sun’s true or real motion in Milky Way Galaxy. Man is able to think, contemplate, and reflect upon realities of World for his physical existence is defended by lack of awareness of true or real nature of World, a very fast spinning object. Man exists in physical World for he is blind, ignorant, or unaware of realities of World.
You can fool all the people some of the time:
A person who claims that he had seen God and proceeds to instruct the ignorant is not anywhere near God. Man’s statements about knowing or seeing God need verification. I cannot support unverified statement using another unverified hypothesis. Man cannot know God using his wisdom, knowledge, or through any kind of learning experience like meditation or mental introspection. As Bhagat Namdev ji mentions, man perceives God by admitting his Spiritual Blindness.
Verification of true ideas:
Man cannot claim intellectual superiority as basis for knowing God. I appreciate man’s interest in formulating theories of God. But, I have to know the theory that is used to verify any given idea. Bhagat Namdev ji repudiates Hindu beliefs about God. It will not help me to know about Hindu ignorance. It will be useful to me if I know his Wisdom. He claimed seeing God. Indians in the past have not questioned or verified his claim. Bhagat Namdev ji was resentful of people’s lack of knowledge. In the past, people have not doubted his Wisdom. What is that he has seen?
Spiritual Blindness of people about God has been expressed by almost all Bhagats, but Bhagat Naam Dev Ji has been most forceful on the subject.
The Rudolf-Rudi doctrine of Spiritualism describes Photoreception by Plants as the perception of Spiritual Light
Yes Indeed, Life is Complicated. The complexity of Life involves the Four Fundamental Forces operating in Nature. Fundamental interactions are irreducible forces that act between the elementary particles composing all matter. Physicists have distinguished four fundamental interactions: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. Physics fails to account for the Fundamental Interaction between Living Matter and Electromagnetic Energy.
The Four Fundamental Interactions described by Physics do not account for the existence of Life on planet Earth. The Rudolf-Rudi doctrine of Spiritualism describes Photoreception by Plants as a Fundamental Spiritual Interaction.
What it is to be a Substance? and What it is to Exist? We need to establish knowledge about the man and the world on a firm basis and the information it provides must be tested for its accuracy and consistency with an external reality. We have to make the fundamental distinction between the living and the non-living matter. The scientific advances of the 19th and 20th centuries reinforced the materialistic position concerning the basic similarity of organic living and inorganic physical matter. The man is viewed as a product of natural evolution and is thought to be subject to the same laws of Physics and Chemistry or mechanistic principles.
We need a methodology to study philosophy and to understand philosophical statements. Logical Positivism, also known as Scientific Empiricism aims to clarify concepts in both everyday and scientific language. It describes analysis of language as the function of philosophy. This analysis of language and of concepts is important to understand questions of belief and ideology which affect what we think we ought to do individually and socially. I would use this method of ‘Applied Philosophy’ to analyze the concept of Spiritual Optics, the Spiritual Connection between Energy and Life. The Laws of Thermodynamics are important unifying principles of Biology. The First Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the Law of Conservation of Energy, states that Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Spiritual Optics accounts for the capacity of photoreception and the term Spiritual Light refers to the creation of Light by God to begin the designing of Matter.
WHOLE DUDE – WHOLE DESIGNER – PHOTORECEPTION:
Photoreception is the biological response of an organism to stimulation by light. It is not the same as the Photoelectric Effect which non-living matter such as metals can exhibit. Among living things, the presence of consciousness is displayed by their biological responses to environmental stimuli. In plants the primary photoreceptive response is described as photosynthesis, a photobiological process which leads to the conversion of carbon dioxide and water to the essential nutritive elements of all life using the energy of the Sun. Photoreception is the mechanism by which animals receive sensory information transmitted by light of different qualities and wavelengths. Just like photosynthesis, the function called vision is a vital photobiological process that is required to support existence. At a fundamental level, the visual function is concerned with supporting existence. Visual clues assist in finding food, to avoid threats to existence, and help to achieve reproductive success. Almost all organisms derive their food directly, or indirectly from the organic compounds formed within plants during photosynthesis. The stored chemical energy in those organic compounds is essential for growth, repair, reproduction, movement, and other vital functions. In animals, the ability of photoreception is dependent upon the chemical energy provided by organic molecules called Adenosine triphosphate or ATP that is produced by intracellular organelles called mitochondria which use the chemical reaction called oxidation-reduction to oxidize the organic molecules created by plants using photosynthetic energy. Thus photoreception is the fundamental photobiological process that maintains life on planet Earth. If God is viewed as the Creator of Light, Photoreception could be stated as the most important feature of a Whole Design to establish life on planet Earth. For the man has the capacity called vision, he should be able to visualize the Whole Design used by the Whole Designer, or Whole Architect, or a Whole Artist. The man gained insights about photoreception and the photosynthetic process over several centuries of careful observations and scientific experimentation.
PHOTORECEPTION AND PLANT GROWTH:
It will be interesting to note that Aristotle, 384-322 B.C. Greek philosopher held the view that the plants grow by obtaining all the components from the soil.
Johannas (Jan) Baptista van Helmont (1580-1644), Belgian chemist, physiologist, and physician conducted experiments to show that water provided the growth material to plants. He studied gases, and identified carbon dioxide.
Stephen Hales studied plant growth, plant transpiration, and found that air is necessary to the food-making process in plants. He was the first to note the relationship between the process of plant growth and Sunlight.
Joseph Priestly, during 1774 studied gases and found that plants produced a gas that he called “dephlogisticated” air. He stated that the most important equations for living things are mutually inverse. In terms of gases exchanged, the respiration of humans represented the reverse of what plants do. He had concluded that some of the mass of plants comes from the air.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier had correctly identified oxygen and discovered the chemical composition of water. He had described the role of oxygen in respiration.
Jan Ingenhousz discovered that light plays a major role in the process by which green plants in Sunlight absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. In 1779 he published his study on the chemical effects of plant physiology: “Experiments Upon Vegetables, Discovering Their Great Power of Purifying the Common Air in Sun-shine and of Injuring It in the Shade and at Night. He found that light is necessary for the restoration of air quality, only the green parts of the plant actually perform photosynthesis while all living parts of the plant damage the air by respiration.
Jean Senebier had published several papers on plant physiology: 1782 – Physico-Chemical Memoirs on the influence of Light; 1783 – Research on the Influence of Sunlight; 1788 – Experiments on the Action of Sunlight on Vegetation; and 1800 – Plant Physiology. He had established that Light is the agent responsible for the fixation of carbon dioxide and that oxygen is liberated only in the presence of carbon dioxide.
Nicolas Theodore de Saussure was a student of Jean Senebier. His published articles include; 1797 – Articles on carbonic acid and its formation in plant tissues; 1804 – Chemical Research on Vegetation; and 1808 – Biochemical Reactions in Plant Cells. He proved Stephen Hale’s theory that plants absorb water and carbon dioxide in Sunlight and increase in weight. He had also demonstrated that plants are dependent upon the absorption of nitrogen from soil.
Julius von Sachs during 1865 proved that Chlorophyll was not generally diffused in all the tissues of a plant but instead was confined to special bodies within the cell which were later named Chloroplasts. His research during 1862-64 proved that the starch present in the chloroplasts is a product that results from the absorption of carbon dioxide, and starch is the first visible product of Photosynthesis.
Richard Martin Willstatter studied the structure of Chlorophyll and other plant pigments. He found that the blood pigment Heme bears a structural resemblance to the Porphyrin compound found in Chlorophyll. He had also discovered the structure of many of the pigments of flowers and fruits.
Robert Hill made significant contribution to the understanding of the photosynthetic process. During 1937, he had established the concept of light-activated electron-transporting photosynthetic chain to release oxygen from water.
In this story on Photoreception, I must mention the name of Otto Heinrich Warburg who investigated Photosynthesis and demonstrated that the process consists of several distinct steps and found that a variety of molecules are involved in the photoreaction.
Melvin Elvis Calvin worked with Andrew Benson, and James Bassham to trace the path of carbon molecule during the entire process of Photosynthesis.
PHOTORECEPTION – VISION:
The photochemical events in vision involve the protein Opsin and the isomers of Retinal. Nerve impulses are generated by changes in the shape of proteins. The activation of visual pigment called Rhodopsin causes the nerve impulse. The photoreceptor cells of eye absorb light through a layer of pigment and convert it into a stimulus directed toward the nervous system where it is recognized. The pigment responsible for nerve excitation consists of the chemical compound Chromophore which absorbs light, and a protein complex known as Opsin. The Chromophore contained in all visual pigments is nearly identical. Variations in the range of wavelength reception by different pigments are the result of differences in the structure of animal proteins. To describe very briefly, the process of photo or light reception involves the conversion of the light stimulus into a nerve response which is caused by changes in the electrochemical equilibrium of cell membranes.
Photoreception is an intelligent function that leads to immanent actions in which the living thing senses, grows, and develops performing those actions. Photoreception in living things is unlike the mechanical action performed by a camera made by man. Photoreception is created to synchronize the existence of the two major systems of life; plants and animals perform their living functions to complement the functions and actions of each other. Hence Photoreception could be described as the spiritual basis for all kinds of existence on planet Earth.
Who is the Artist? Who is the Designer?
No single function can explain the coloration of living things. We need a comprehensive theory that predicts the lines and patterns of coloration of plants and animals. An artist’s palette containing only three properly chosen colors is entirely adequate under most circumstances to produce the various visual effects of color that is observed. The optical mechanisms involved in the production of color are complex. Coloration is a dynamic and complex characteristic and the term must be clearly distinguished from the term ‘color’ which only refers to the spectral qualities of emitted or reflected light. It is apparent that plants, and animals have no cognitive abilities to produce the coloration by which they are recognized. However, the coloration displayed gives us a clue about the nature of the “Whole Artist” who could be using imagination, has feelings for the forms created and seeks satisfaction from the visual effects that he produced.
If a man has the ability called visual perception, he must use the ability to visualize the “Whole Artist” who is at work. I ask my readers to give attention to the three dimensions of Color Perception. These are, 1. The Designer or the Artist, 2. The Object of Perception, and 3. The visual capacity of the Viewer.
Simon Cyrene
The Rudi-Grant Connection 
