The Body, page 44
CHAPTER 6: DOWN THE HATCH: THE MOUTH AND THROAT
Midway through the entertainment: “Profiles,” New Yorker, Sept. 9, 1953; Vaughan, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, 196–97.
he was the person who first postulated: Birkhead, Most Perfect Thing, 150.
The anatomist’s word for swallowing: Collis, Living with a Stranger, 20.
choking is the fourth most common: Lieberman, Evolution of the Human Head, 297.
Henry Heimlich was something of a showman: “The Choke Artist,” New Republic, April 23, 2007; New York Times obituary, April 23, 2007.
2,374 imprudently ingested objects: Cappello, Swallow, 4–6; New York Times, Jan. 11, 2011.
Jackson was a cold and friendless man: Annals of Thoracic Surgery 57 (1994): 502–5.
A typical adult secretes: “Gut Health May Begin in the Mouth,” Harvard Magazine, Oct. 20, 2017.
we secrete about 31,700 quarts: Tallis, Kingdom of Infinite Space, 25.
a powerful painkiller called opiorphin: “Natural Painkiller Found in Human Spit,” Nature, Nov. 13, 2006.
We produce very little saliva while we sleep: Enders, Gut, 22.
150 different chemical compounds: Scientific American, May 2013, 20.
Altogether, about a thousand species of bacteria: Ibid.
Dawson’s team found that candle blowing: Clemson University press release, “A True Food Myth Buster,” Dec. 13, 2011.
teeth have been called “ready-made fossils”: Ungar, Evolution’s Bite, 5.
if you are a typical adult male: Lieberman, Evolution of the Human Head, 226.
the most regenerative of all cells in the body: New Scientist, March 16, 2013, 45.
In fact, that is a myth, traced to a textbook: Nature, June 21, 2012, S2.
the body has taste receptors in the gut and throat: Roach, Gulp, 46.
Taste receptors have also been found: New Scientist, Aug. 8, 2015, 40–41.
These contain a poison called tetrodotoxin: Ashcroft, Life at the Extremes, 54; “Last Supper?,” Guardian, Aug. 5, 2016.
the British author Nicholas Evans: “I Wanted to Die. It Was So Grim,” Daily Telegraph, Aug. 2, 2011.
We have about ten thousand taste receptors: “A Matter of Taste?,” Chemistry World, Feb. 2017; Holmes, Flavor, 83; “Fire-Eaters,” New Yorker, Nov. 4, 2013.
A purified version of a Moroccan spurge plant: Holmes, Flavor, 85.
Chinese adults who ate a lot of capsaicin: Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Jan. 2016, 47.
Some authorities believe we also have: New Scientist, Aug. 8, 2015, 40–41.
Today Ajinomoto is a behemoth: Mouritsen and Styrbaek, Umami, 28.
Smell is said to account for: Holmes, Flavor, 21.
The students without exception listed: BMC Neuroscience, Sept. 18, 2007.
if an orange-flavored drink is colored red: Scientific American, Jan. 2013, 69.
“are perhaps more extensively debated”: Lieberman, Evolution of the Human Head, 315.
Within or around it are nine cartilages: Ibid., 284.
Johann Dieffenbach, one of Germany’s most eminent surgeons: “The Paralysis of Stuttering,” New York Review of Books, April 26, 2012.
CHAPTER 7: THE HEART AND BLOOD
“Stopped”: Quoted in “In the Hands of Any Fool,” London Review of Books, July 3, 1997.
That symbol first appeared: Peto, Heart, 30.
Every hour your heart dispenses: Nuland, How We Die, 22.
It has been calculated: Morris, Body Watching, 11.
Of all the blood pumped out: Blakelaw and Jennett, Oxford Companion to the Body, 88–89.
Every time you stand up: The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, podcast, BBC Radio 4, Sept. 13, 2016.
Much of the early research on blood pressure: Amidon and Amidon, Sublime Engine, 116; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Hales, Stephen.”
Well into the twentieth century: “Why So Many of Us Die of Heart Disease,” Atlantic, March 6, 2018.
in 2017 the American Heart Association: “New Blood Pressure Guidelines Put Half of US Adults in Unhealthy Range,” Science News, Nov. 13, 2017.
At least 50 million Americans: Amidon and Amidon, Sublime Engine, 227.
In the United States alone: Health, United States, 2016, DHSS Publication No. 2017-1232, May 2017.
A heart attack and a cardiac arrest: Wolpert, You’re Looking Very Well, 18; “Don’t Try This at Home,” London Review of Books, Aug. 29, 2013.
For about a quarter of victims: Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, April 2017, 240.
A woman is more likely to experience: Brooks, At the Edge of Uncertainty, 104–5.
the Hmong people of Southeast Asia: Amidon and Amidon, Sublime Engine, 191–92.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is the condition: “When Genetic Autopsies Go Awry,” Atlantic, Oct. 11, 2016.
The triggering event for public awareness: Pearson, Life Project, 101–3.
the Framingham study recruited five thousand local adults: Ibid.; framinghamheartstudy.org.
he fed a catheter into an artery in his arm: Nourse, Body, 85.
build a machine that could oxygenate blood artificially: Le Fanu, Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine, 95; National Academy of Sciences, biographical memoir by Harris B. Schumacher Jr., Washington, D.C., 1982.
In 1958, a Swedish engineer named Rune Elmqvist: Ashcroft, Spark of Life, 152–53.
in 2000 he killed himself: New York Times obituary, Aug. 21, 2000; “Interview: Dr. Steven E. Nissen,” Take One Step, PBS, Aug. 2006, www.pbs.org.
To remove a beating heart: Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Oct. 2017, 476.
Frey’s sample contained a fungus: Ibid., 247.
success rates of 80 percent: Le Fanu, Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine, 102.
Today some four to five thousand heart transplants: Amidon and Amidon, Sublime Engine, 198–99.
The young woman’s parents argue: Economist, April 28, 2018, 56.
“Heart disease kills about the same number”: Kinch, Prescription for Change, 112.
By 2000, a million precautionary angioplasties: Welch, Less Medicine, More Health, 34–36.
“This is really American medicine at its worst”: Ibid., 38.
A newborn baby contains only about eight ounces: Collis, Living with a Stranger, 28.
twenty-five thousand miles of blood vessels: Pasternak, Molecules Within Us, 58.
a single drop of blood: Hill, Blood, 14–15.
In the United States, plasma sales: Economist, May 12, 2018, 12.
Hemoglobin has one strange and dangerous quirk: Annals of Medicine, New Yorker, Jan. 31, 1970.
Each will be shot around your body: Blakelaw and Jennett, Oxford Companion to the Body, 85.
In severe bleeding, the body: Miller, Body in Question, 121–22.
They also play important roles in immune response: Nature, Sept. 28, 2017, S13.
Nearly all Harvey’s peers thought him: Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh, 74.
Harvey couldn’t explain how blood circulating: Wootton, Bad Medicine, 95–98.
Lower transfused about half a pint: “An Account of the Experiment of Transfusion, Practised upon a Man in London,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Dec. 9, 1667.
William Osler, author of The Principles and Practice of Medicine: “An Autopsy of Dr. Osler,” New York Review of Books, May 25, 2000.
Although everybody reads and pronounces: Nourse, Body, 184.
There are some four hundred kinds of antigens: Sanghavi, Map of the Child, 64
“Blood is a living tissue”: Dr. Allan Doctor interview, Oxford, Sept. 18, 2018.
For more than fifty years: “The Quest for One of Science’s Holy Grails: Artificial Blood,” Stat, Feb. 27, 2017; “Red Blood Cell Substitutes,” Chemistry World, Feb. 16, 2018.
a $1.6 million saving in costs: “Save Blood, Save Lives,” Nature, April 2, 2015.
CHAPTER 8: THE CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT
One twelve-year-old boy was left so hungry: Bliss, Discovery of Insulin, 37.
“wrongly conceived, wrongly conducted”: Ibid., 12–13.
“The discovery of insulin”: “The Pissing Evile,” London Review of Books, Dec. 1, 1983.
Others have suggested an imbalance: “Cause and Effect,” Nature, May 17, 2012.
Between 1980 and 2014, the number of adults: Nature, May 26, 2016, 460.
That means that insulin levels: “The Edmonton Protocol,” New Yorker, Feb. 10, 2003.
“I love hormones”: Interviews with Dr. John Wass, Oxford, March 21 and Sept. 17, 2018.
Starling coined the term “hormone”: Sengoopta, Most Secret Quintessence of Life, 4.
History’s most famous sufferer: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, Dec. 1, 2006, 4849–53; “The Medical Ordeals of JFK,” Atlantic, Dec. 2002.
Yet in tests where oxytocin: Nature, June 25, 2015, 410–12.
Perhaps no one has better understood: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, London, Nov. 1998; New York Times obituary, Jan. 19, 1995.
In what way exactly testosterone might shorten: Bribiescas, Men, 202.
there is much greater evidence: New Scientist, May 16, 2015, 32.
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: Nature, Nov. 23, 2017, S85; Annals of Internal Medicine, Nov. 6, 2018.
Each day they process about 190 quarts: Pasternak, Molecules Within Us, 60.
As we age, the bladder loses elasticity: Nuland, How We Die, 55.
the urinary world is at least somewhat microbial: Nature, Nov. 9, 2017, S40.
Probably history’s most famous lithotomy: Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, 60–65.
Pepys for his part marked the anniversary: “Samuel Pepys and His Stones,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons 59 (1977).
CHAPTER 9: IN THE DISSECTING ROOM: THE SKELETON
“Feel this,” Dr. Ben Ollivere is saying to me: Dr. Ben Ollivere interview, Nottingham, June 23–24, 2017.
there was a brief scandal in America: “Yale Students and Dental Professor Took Selfie with Severed Heads,” Guardian, Feb. 5, 2018.
When the great anatomist Andreas Vesalius: Wootton, Bad Medicine, 74.
William Harvey, in England, was so desperate: Larson, Severed, 217.
Falloppio and the criminal together: Wootton, Bad Medicine, 91.
All of his illustrations had to be drawn: Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Oct. 2009, 342–45.
regular exercise helps to stave off Alzheimer’s: “Do Our Bones Influence Our Minds?,” New Yorker, Nov. 1, 2013.
It takes one hundred muscles: Collis, Living with a Stranger, 56.
Studies by NASA have shown: NASA information sheet, “Muscle Atrophy.”
Sir Charles Bell, the great: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Bell, Sir Charles.”
What we do have in our thumbs: Roberts, Incredible Unlikeliness of Being, 333–35.
A good deal of what we know: Francis, Adventures in Human Being, 126–27.
The average human walks at a pace: “Gait Analysis: Principles and Applications,” American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, Oct. 1995.
ostriches have eliminated this problem: Taylor, Body by Darwin, 85.
“as early as the eighteenth year”: Medawar, Uniqueness of the Individual, 109.
An estimated 60 percent of adults: Wall, Pain, 100–101.
surgeons perform over 800,000 joint replacements: “The Coming Revolution in Knee Repair,” Scientific American, March 2015.
Almost no one has heard of Charnley: Le Fanu, Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine, 104–8.
Three-quarters of men and half of women: Wolpert, You’re Looking Very Well, 21.
CHAPTER 10: ON THE MOVE: BIPEDALISM AND EXERCISE
In 2016, anthropologists at the University of Texas: “Perimortem Fractures in Lucy Suggest Mortality from Fall out of Tall Tree,” Nature, Sept. 22, 2016.
A chimpanzee uses four times: Lieberman, Story of the Human Body, 42.
Fossil evidence suggests that early hominins: “The Evolution of Marathon Running,” Sports Medicine 37, no. 4–5 (2007); “Elastic Energy Storage in the Shoulder and the Evolution of High-Speed Throwing in Homo,” Nature, June 27, 2013.
Jeremy Morris, became convinced: Jeremy Morris obituary, New York Times, Nov. 7, 2009.
Going for regular walks reduces the risk: New Yorker, May 20, 2013, 46.
Being active for an hour or more: Scientific American, Aug. 2013, 71; “Is Exercise Really Medicine? An Evolutionary Perspective,” Current Sports Medicine Reports, July—Aug. 2015.
The ten-thousand-step idea: “Watch Your Step,” Guardian, Sept. 3, 2018.
Only about 20 percent of people: “Is Exercise Really Medicine?”
Today the average American walks: Lieberman, Story of the Human Body, 217–18.
“Some workers have reportedly”: Economist, Jan. 5, 2019, 50.
Modern hunter-gatherers, by contrast: “Is Exercise Really Medicine?”
“If you want to understand the human body”: Lieberman interview.
If everybody else in the world: “Eating Disorder,” Economist, June 19, 2012.
A bodybuilder and a couch potato: “The Fat Advantage,” Nature, Sept. 15, 2016.
the average woman in the United States: Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Jan. 2016.
more than half of today’s children: “Interest in Ketogenic Diet Grows for Weight Loss and Type 2 Diabetes,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Jan. 16, 2018.
The current generation of young people: Zuk, Paleofantasy, 5.
The British are among the tubbiest: Economist, March 31, 2018, 30.
The global figure for obesity is 13 percent: Economist, Jan. 6, 2018, 20.
According to one calculation, you must walk: “The Bear’s Best Friend,” New York Review of Books, May 12, 2016.
people overestimate the number: “Exercise in Futility,” Atlantic, April 2016.
a worker on a factory floor: Lieberman, Story of the Human Body, 217.
People who sit a lot: “Are You Sitting Comfortably? Well, Don’t,” New Scientist, June 26, 2013.
If you spend an evening: “Our Amazingly Plastic Brains,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 6, 2015; “The Futility of the Workout-Sit Cycle,” Atlantic, Aug. 16, 2016.
James Levine, an obesity expert: “Killer Chairs: How Desk Jobs Ruin Your Health,” Scientific American, Nov. 2014.
That alone burned 65 extra calories an hour: New Scientist, Aug. 25, 2012, 41.
“a pile of rubbish”: “The Big Fat Truth,” Nature, May 23, 2013.
CHAPTER 11: EQUILIBRIUM
little creatures have to produce heat: Blumberg, Body Heat, 35–38.
One area where animals are curiously: West, Scale, 197.
A typical mammal uses about thirty times: Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide, 179.
To move more than a very few degrees: Blumberg, Body Heat, 206.
That experiment largely recalled: Royal Society, “Experiments and Observations in a Heated Room by Charles Blagden, 1774.”
Curiously, no one knows quite why this happens: Ashcroft, Life at the Extremes, 133–34; Blumberg, Body Heat, 146–47.
An increase of only a degree or so: Davis, Beautiful Cure, 113.
The idea, incidentally, that we lose most of our heat: “Myth: We Lose Most Heat from Our Heads,” Naked Scientists, podcast, Oct. 24, 2016.
The man who coined the term: Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 5, no. 15 (Feb. 1947): 407–23; American National Biography, s.v. “Cannon, Walter Bradford.”
paper on the practice of voodoo: “ ‘Voodoo’ Death,” American Anthropologist, April—June 1942.
Every day you produce and consume: West, Scale, 100.
you have only sixty grams: Lane, Vital Question, 63.
The person who discovered: Biographical Memoirs, Royal Society, London.
“I was your first wife”: Biochemistry and Biology Molecular Education 32, no. 1 (2004): 62–66.
A child half your height: “Size and Shape,” Natural History, Jan. 1974.
a British airman in World War II: “The Indestructible Alkemade,” RAF Museum website, posted Dec. 24, 2014.
Consider the case of little Erika Nordby: Edmonton Sun, Aug. 28, 2014.
Between 1998 and August 2018, almost eight hundred children: Full details can be found at the website noheatstroke.org.
The highest permanent settlements in the world: Ashcroft, Life at the Extremes, 8.
Tenzing Norgay and Raymond Lambert: Ibid., 26.
At sea level, about 40 percent of your blood volume: Ibid., 341.
Ashcroft notes the case of a pilot: Ibid., 19.
In Nazi Germany, healthy prisoners: Annas and Grodin, Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code, 25–26.
In a typical experiment, Chinese prisoners: Williams and Wallace, Unit 731, 42.
Some, for unfathomable reasons, were dissected: “Blood and Money,” New York Review of Books, Feb. 4, 1999.
When pregnant women or young children: Lax, Toxin, 123.
in 1984 a student from Keio University: Williams and Wallace, Unit 731.
CHAPTER 12: THE IMMUNE SYSTEM
we have some three hundred different types of immune cells: “Ambitious Human Cell Atlas Aims to Catalog Every Type of Cell in the Body,” National Public Radio, Aug. 13, 2018.
If you are stressed or exhausted: “Department of Defense,” New York Review of Books, Oct. 8, 1987.
