In 1817, d’Arcet Jr., a chemist by trade, came up with a method for extracting gelatin from bones (and money from Parisian welfare coffers). Public hospitals and poorhouses, having swallowed the prepo...
Gravity is why there are suns and planets in the first place. It is practically God. In the beginning, the cosmos was nothing but empty space and vast clouds of gases. Eventually the gases cooled to t...
Experiment 1 began at noon on August 1, 1825. I introduced through the perforation, into the stomach, the following articles of diet, suspended by a silk string: . . . a piece of high seasoned à la mo...
Dissection and surgical instruction, like meat-eating, require a carefully maintained set of illusions and denial.
My books are not really books; they're endless chains of distraction shoved inside a cover. Many of them begin at the search box of Pub Med, an Internet database of medical journal articles.
Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much normalcy can people forgo? For how long, and what does it do to them?
Monkeys offer an unadulterated demonstration of the power of hormones, as the females are not concerned about pregnancy or what their friends will think.
I write all this with respect for thepossibility that rather than some kind ofcontact with the consciousness of my donor'sheart, these are merely hallucinations fromthe medications or my own projectio...
Heroism doesn’t always happen in a burst of glory. Sometimes small triumphs and large hearts change the course of history. Sometimes a chicken can save a man’s life. ___________
Double sentencing wasn’t a new idea, but rather the latest variation on the theme. Before that, a murderer might be hanged and then drawn and quartered, wherein horses were tied to his limbs and spurr...
Ask him about Fletcherizing. You’re going to spend all day just having breakfast. You will lose your job!
You do not question an author who appears on the title page as T.V.N. Persaud, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.Path. (Lond.), F.F.Path. (R.C.P.I.), F.A.C.O.G.
The researchers concluded that during intercourse in the missionary position, the penis has the shape of a boomerang.
The Babylonians were the original liver guys, believing the organ to be the source of human emotion and spirit. The Mesopotamians played both sides of the argument, assigning emotion to the liver and...
One thing to be said in favor of thorough chewing is that it slows an eater down. This is helpful if that particular eater is trying to shed some weight. By the time his brain registers that his stoma...
On the Iron Chef episode Battle Offal, judges swooned over raw heart tartar, lamb’s liver truffles, tripe, sweetbreads, and gizzard.
In the words of the late Francis Crick...You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a va...
I tell Mark I’m glad to see some cup holders were left in place. I recognize the brief, polite silence that follows. It’s Mark Roman rendered mute by the fullness of my ignorance. They’re rifle holder...
Science is you! It's your head, it's your dog, it's your iPhone - it's the world. How do you see that as boring? If it's boring, it's because you're learning it from a textbook.
I don't read good books anymore, it seems; I just buy them and put them on the shelf and every now and then walk over and pet them. I'm like the optimistic dieter who fills her closet with clothes two...