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The sensational saga ran for a few months, until inevitably Toft was rumbled. A porter was caught smuggling a rabbit into her room. And, to the embarrassment
of many distinguished medical men, Toft confessed to
Douglas, implicating others in the hoax. The exact motive is a mystery, as is whether Toft was coerced into this
dreadful ordeal. Though it’s unlikely she acted alone,
or voluntarily.
What is for sure, is that the pitiful creatures were inserted into Toft’s vagina, for the doctors to pull a rabbit
out of the hat, so to speak.
Pudendal nerve
How we’re hardwired to say jay-jay,
giney, weenie, winky, and worse
You can’t see The Great Wall of Vulva from space. As
great walls go, it’s on the small side. But the - meterlong ( feet) sculpture featuring plaster casts of four
hundred vulvas certainly makes a big impression. This
out-there exhibition of vulval variety, on show in Miami,
Florida, in , is a refreshing antidote to the shame
many people feel about their “privates.”
It’s shame that’s hardwired into us from birth. Private parts are to be neither seen nor heard. So we counterbalance the weight of our shame by making light of
our genitals, with genteel euphemisms—jay-jay, winkie,
willy, wiener, thingy, downstairs, and so on—and an
almost infinite variety of vulgar nicknames, dick names,
and chick names. A UK survey found percent of
young women had a problem saying “vulva” or “vagina.” Body parts that dare not speak their name.
This shameful avoidance is, frankly, dangerous. Children may be less likely to be sexually abused if they
know and use the correct anatomical names for their
genitals, research shows. A study found some perpetrators avoided these kids because it indicated they’d
been educated about body safety and sexuality.
Knowing the correct anatomical names also helps
children successfully disclose abuse. “He touched my
mun” may not elicit the same concern as “He touched
my vulva.”
Tellingly, shame also dominates our anatomy, as well
as our vocabulary. Shame is hardwired into our genitals
via our pudendal nerves.
They—one on each side—are pleasure nerves, carrying sensations from the penis and scrotum, much of the
vulva, and lower part of the vagina. They’re also indisputably our most shameful nerves. “Pudendal” is from
the Latin word “pudere,” meaning “to be ashamed.” As
is “pudendum,” another word for “vulva.” (Vulva is the
name for the female external genitalia: labia majora and
minora, clitoris, and the opening of the vagina, among
other things.)
Pudendum can apply to men’s, as well as women’s,
genitals. Though, perhaps not surprisingly, the term is
mostly reserved for women, sparing guys some of the
naming and shaming. Because of its shameful roots,
pudendum was banished from ocial anatomical terminology in .
So, while it’s good for kids to be au fait with their
genitals’ anatomical names, they can steer clear of “pudendum” and perhaps also “pudendal nerve.”
Putamen
How deux is better than one
Si vous maîtrisez ces deux langues, lire deux fois la même
chose (voir phrase adjacente) peut être un peu fastidieux. If
you are proficient in both of these languages, reading
the same thing twice (see adjacent sentence) can be a
bit tedious.
But there is an upside. Your bilingual brain is mag-
nifique. Learning a second language induces changes
in the brain that may give you advantages over people
for whom double Dutch is the closest they’ll get to
bilingual.
“The neuroanatomical [brain] changes in bilinguals
result in enhanced executive functions, greater mental
flexibility and an increased capacity for conflict resolution beyond that relating to language,” a review of the
consequences of bilingualism said.
Importantly, the changes in brain gray and white
matter may slow the decline in memory and thinking
that occurs as we age, and help prevent Alzheimer’s
disease. Among people with Alzheimer’s, bilinguals are
diagnosed four to five years later than those who speak
one language.
But if you are bilingual, don’t think you’re the crème
de la crème. Au contraire. It’s estimated that over half the
world’s population can speak two or more languages.
Lots of bits of the brain are involved in language
processing, interpretation, and production. Having a
second language induces changes in many, for example,
the left putamen. (In most people, the brain’s left side is
dominant for language.) The putamen is a largish structure deep below the surface of each brain hemisphere.
Its raison d’être has traditionally been thought to be its
important role in controlling movement. However, recent studies suggest it’s involved in a wider variety of
functions.
Research in people who spoke more than one language found they had increased density of gray matter
in their left putamen. One of the brain changes thought
to be beneficial in bilinguals. And, if you parles français,
sprichst Deutsch, or parli italiano, as well as English, keep
practicing. The more proficient you are in your second
language, the greater the putamen’s gray matter density.
For much of the twentieth century, many experts
thought learning a second language was a handicap for
children. There were concerns it was a mental burden,
making kids confuse their languages, and impairing
their intelligence.
In the s, there was a volte-face, after a Canadian study found that children who spoke English and
French had better verbal and nonverbal intelligence
than their monolingual mates. If you were bilingual,
and prone to tiresome repetition, you’d say, “C’est fan-
tastique. That’s fantastic.”
Pylorus
How bacterial broth trumped gut instinct
Don’t believe the hyper. Sugar doesn’t turn kids into
uncontrollable, hyperactive monsters. Chewing gum
doesn’t stick around in the stomach for seven years. And
spicy foods don’t cause stomach ulcers. Popular medical
fantasies. Debunked by reality.
Fact is, candy messes with parents’ brains, not their
kids’. Of twelve high-quality studies looking at kids’
Pyloric sphincter
Stomach
Pylor
us
reactions to diets with dierent amounts of sugar, none
found it aected behavior. But if parents think their kids
have had a sugary drink, they say the little monkeys are
more hyperactive, even if the drink was sugar-free. As for
gum, it just goes through us. And most stomach ulcers
are caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori.
H. pylori is named after its looks and location. It’s
helix-shaped and was first discovered in the lower part
of the stomach, which includes the pylorus.
“Pylorus” is from the Greek for “gatekeeper.” Your
stomach’s pylorus guards the gates to the rest of your
guts. Here, a ring of muscle—pyloric sphincter—
regulates the flow of food into the small intestine.
Before it leaves, strong acid and digestive enzymes
break down the food. What’s remarkable is that they
don’t also make a meal of you, digesting yourself from
the inside. To stop us becoming a sickening flesh-andsinew smoothie, our stomach wall is coated with a protective layer of viscous mucus. Mucus that H. pylori
calls home.
The stomach’s inhospitable interior doesn’t suit
many bacteria, but H. pylori cleverly uses its shape to
corkscrew into the safety of the mucus. Once there, it
usually keeps itself secret: most infected people don’t
have symptoms, thankfully, bearing in mind that over
percent of human stomachs worldwide are colonized
with H. pylori. Usually we’re infected as a kid, likely
from our mum, and the bacteria may keep us company
our whole life.
Not so long ago, this savvy stomach squatter was
a bacterial small potato, unknown in fact. It’s a big
cheese today thanks to two Australian doctors, Robin
Warren and Barry Marshall. They won a Nobel Prize
in for discovering H. pylori and its role in stomach
ulcers.
However, they did their discovering back in the
s. At that time, the idea that H. pylori and stom-
ach ulcers were connected was beyond belief for many
medics. They snootily stuck to the prevailing doctrine
that lifestyle factors like stress and spicy foods caused
the problem. To help convince the dyspeptic skeptics,
Marshall made himself sick to the stomach by drinking
broth teeming with H. pylori.
Turns out, spicy curries don’t give you ulcers. Bacteria soup does.
uadratus plantae
How good eggs hold the secret to immortality
Q
viuses, and the worst of Sylviuses. Two eminent anatomists named Sylvius, whose stories hold the secret to
eternal life. And it begins, not with their immortal souls,
but with the thick-skinned soles of their feet.
your toes flex. Jacobus Sylvius, a top sixteenth-century
anatomist, first named it. The Frenchman actually
called it “massa carnae,” a label later consigned to the
anatomical trash can. Jacobus named many other parts
of us, like our biceps and triceps muscles. He was also
among the first to write about a brain part called the cerebral aqueduct, also known as the aqueduct of Sylvius.
ciscus Sylvius, a German-born anatomist who lived over
a hundred years after the Frenchman. Franciscus Sylvius also gave his name to many other bits of your anatomy, like the Sylvian fissure (aka lateral sulcus), a deep
groove that runs along each side of your brain. Whereas
Jacobus Sylvius doesn’t seem to be immortalized in any
part of you. Even a part he did first describe is associated with a contemporary: Bartolomeo Eustachi’s Eustachian valve, at the entrance to the heart’s right side.
Jacobus Sylvius, dead to us? Ostracized from our insides. Eponymously anonymous.
ability, productivity, or originality. The crucial dierence was their likability. Franciscus was popular with
his students. Unlike the petulant, intolerant, vindictive
This is a tale of two Sylviuses. The best of Syl-
Quadratus plantae is a muscle in the sole that helps
But this Sylvius in our brain isn’t Jacobus. It’s Fran-
So why is Franciscus Sylvius living on inside us, and
The answer has nothing to do with their relative
Front
Back
Sylvian ssure
(lateral sulcus)
Jacobus. And at that time, students would honor respected teachers by naming parts of us after them, even
if they weren’t the first to describe them.
Jacobus’s exile from the anatomy textbooks was
sealed thanks to his feud with one particular student.
This was no minor ti. This was a full-on, scalpels-atdawn dustup. And Jacobus certainly went the extra bile.
He even begged the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to
punish the student, “this worst example of ignorance,
ingratitude, arrogance, and impiety, to suppress him
so that he may not poison the rest of Europe with his
pestilential breath.”
This was a spectacular fail. The sacrilegious student
with horrible halitosis was none other than Andreas Vesalius, now recognized as one of the greatest anatomists
ever. The “founder of modern anatomy.” In the quest
for anatomical immortality, Jacobus Sylvius had egg on
his face, while Franciscus Sylvius was a good egg. And
(hopefully) good eggs take the cake.
ecurrent laryngeal nerve
How giraes are a pain in the neck
R
If the average IQ is , then God’s must be way o
the charts. After all, he is omniscient, omnipotent, and
omnipresent, at least according to traditional Christian
belief. All-knowing, all-powerful, and everywhere. Not
even AI can boast that, yet.
creationists’ arguments against evolution. They maintain
that a hyper-brainy deity created all life, pretty much as
we know it today, instead of it gradually evolving. They
call this “intelligent design.” Trouble is, if divine design
was responsible for your recurrent laryngeal nerves, then
God isn’t as smart as they’d like to think he is.
control most of the muscles in your voice box (larynx),
among other things. Damage to one can cause a hoarse
voice. Their fibers originate in the brain. But they don’t
take the short route to the larynx, as the crow flies, as
an intelligent designer would surely have stipulated on
the blood-stained blueprints. They take a dumb detour.
stem, at the brain’s base, inside the left and right vagus
nerves, which run down the neck. The right recurrent
laryngeal nerve branches o the right vagus near the
root of the neck. The left one branches from the left
vagus, a little further down, in the chest. Both then do
for evolution’s opponents
God’s infinite smarts are the foundation for some
Your recurrent laryngeal nerves—left and right—
The recurrent laryngeal nerves’ fibers exit the brain-
a U-turn, looping under large blood vessels and going
back up the neck to the larynx. Hence the name “recurrent,” which means “turned back to run in the opposite
direction.”
This neck trek can be explained by our development
in the womb. The nerves appear early, before we have a
neck. As our neck grows, the nerves are dragged down,
away from the head, forcing them to get longer and
longer to maintain the connection to the larynx.
It’s unintelligent design.
But our recurrent laryngeal nerves aren’t the ones
usually held up to help refute intelligent design. All fourlimbed vertebrates (animals with a backbone) have this
inecient U-turn. And one of these has seven vertebrae
in its neck that are so large, their recurrent laryngeal
nerve fibers are almost meters ( feet) long. That
would be the girae, whose necks can grow to up to
. meters ( feet).
Human and girae recurrent laryngeal nerves: dumb,
and dumber.
Rods and cones
How we’re all visionaries, even if we’re mistaken about Jesus
Why did Isaac Newton stick a bodkin into his eye? How
did the scientific superstar get the bodkin in? And what
on Earth is a bodkin?
Newton wasn’t your average, run-of-the-mill genius. One of history’s most influential scientists, he was
hyper- obsessive, never afraid to ask the hard questions,
then go the extra mile, and eyeball, for answers. As well
as developing his law of gravity, the Englishman was
visionary about vision, proving that light is made of a
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