Mary Roach Quote

He told me that a German doctor named Wolff figured it out in the 1800s by studying X-rays of infants’ hips as they transitioned from crawling to walking. A whole new evolution of bone structure takes place to support the mechanical loads associated with walking, said Lang. Wolff had the great insight that form follows function. Alas, Wolff did not have the great insight that cancer follows gratuitous X-raying with primitive nineteenth-century X-ray machines.

Mary Roach

He told me that a German doctor named Wolff figured it out in the 1800s by studying X-rays of infants’ hips as they transitioned from crawling to walking. A whole new evolution of bone structure takes place to support the mechanical loads associated with walking, said Lang. Wolff had the great insight that form follows function. Alas, Wolff did not have the great insight that cancer follows gratuitous X-raying with primitive nineteenth-century X-ray machines.

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About Mary Roach

Mary Roach (born March 20, 1959) is an American author specializing in popular science and humor. She has published seven New York Times bestsellers: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008), Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010), Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013), Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (2016), and Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (2021).