by Mary Roach, 2013
Funny book about all the sensationalist science on the alimentary canal, starting with taste (it’s almost all about our nose) down through all the digestive processes. She reports on a wine-tasting comparing six bottles hidden in brown paper bags. “‘At least one is under $10 and two are over $50…Over the past eighteen years, every time, the least expensive wine averages the highest ranking, and the most expensive two finish at the bottom.'”
The chapter on Saliva is interesting but she insults Jesus and the Bible: “‘The Greeks got it from the Roman Catholics, whose priests used to baptize with spittle. The priests got it from the Gospel of Mark–the bit where Jesus heals the blind by mixing dirt with his saliva and rubbing the mud on a man’s eyelids. “It’s an interesting passage,” former Catholic priest Tom Rastrelli told me, “because the writers of the gospels of Luke and Matthew, who used Mark as their source, redacted a line.” Mark had included a bit about a blind man opening his eyes and seeing what looked like trees walking around. In other words, the treatment was minimally effective. The miracle of Jesus bestowing rudimentary vision to the blind doesn’t have the same ring to it, so the line was cut.”‘
Let me just say, Jesus, our Lord, Creator, and Mighty God, created us and sustains us with His powerful Word. He doesn’t need spit or anything to heal us completely; He need only say the word. He created our amazing bodies and knows their processes – we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Scientists spend their lives researching and testing and learning about the processes that God spoke into existence.
Mary Roach takes the most sensational bits of scientific history, news, studies, research, regarding the alimentary canal, and reports on them and adds humor, especially in her multitude of footnotes. She ends the book with a chapter on Constipation and talks about megacolons and the speculation that Elvis died while trying hard to poop. He had problems with constipation. His doctor tells Mary that he carried around “three or four boxes of Fleets” for Elvis. It’s possible he had “Hirschsprung’s disease.” She describes it like this: “As J.W.’s embryonic self was laying down nerves along the length of the colon, the process petered out. The final stretch was lift without. As a result, peristalsis–the wave of contraction and dilation that moves things through the gut–stops right there. Digesta pile up until the pressure builds to a point where it shoves things through.” Having to push hard to poop can cause ‘fatal arrhythmia’ and that is what was listed as the cause of death on Elvis’s autopsy. “The other mode of defecation-associated sudden death is pulmonary embolism. The surge of blood when the person relaxes can dislodge a clot in a large blood vessel. When the clot reaches the lungs it can get stuck, causing a fatal blockage, or embolism.”
I like her footnotes – they are hilarious. Here is one on the fight bite – when a person’s finger is split hitting someone in the mouth. “*Fear the fight bite: it can cause septic arthritis. In one study, 18 of 100 cases ended in amputation of a finger. Hopefully the middle one. In the aggressive patient, a missing middle finger may be good preventive medicine.”
So, a funny book, sort of informative, but one book of Mary Roach’s was almost one too many.