Hydrogen sulfide is as lethal, molecule for molecule, as cyanide. This may explain why humans evolved such exquisite sensitivity to its smell.
Higher-end detergents contain at least three digestive enzymes: amylase to break down starchy stains, protease for proteins, and lipase for greasy stains (not just edible fats but body oils like sebum...
Gibbeting—though it hits the ear like a word for happy playground chatter or perhaps, at worst, the cleaning of small game birds—is in fact a ghastly verb. To gibbet is to dip a corpse in tar and susp...
Fletcher believed—decided, really—that by chewing each mouthful of food until it liquefies, the eater could absorb more or less double the amount of vitamins and other nutrients. Half the food commonl...
Dissection and surgical instruction, like meat-eating, require a carefully maintained set of illusions and denial. Physicians and anatomy students must learn to think of cadavers as wholly unrelated t...
Crispy foods carry a uniquely powerful appeal. I asked Chen what might lie behind this seemingly universal drive to crunch things in our mouths. I believe human being has a destructive nature in its g...
Another strategy was to target kids. The human infant enters the world without information about what is edible and what is not, wrote psychologist Paul Rozin, who studied disgust for many years at th...
Another group tried putting a new type of protective boot onto the hind leg of a mule deer for testing. Given that deer lack toes and heels and people lack hooves, and that no country I know of employ...
Animals have evolved to survive, Rawson says. They like what’s best for them. People blanch to see fish meal or meat meal on a pet-food ingredient panel, but meal—which variously includes organs, head...
And that if you did tell them the details, they might change their minds and withdraw consent.
Think of it.' said Robert Rosenbluth, a doctor whose acquaintance i made at the start of this book. 'no engineer could design something as multifunctional and fine tuned as an anus. to call someone an...
Sugar itself doesn’t cause cavities; it’s the acidic metabolites of the bacteria that feed on the sugar. As with acidic foods, saliva dilutes the acid and brings the mouth back to a neutral pH. You
You are a person and then you cease to be a person, and a cadaver takes your place.
Why don’t suicide bombers smuggle bombs in their rectums?
What’s different? Sweat, risk, uncertainty, inconvenience. But also, awe. Pride. Something ineffably splendid and stirring.
What ensued was a game of Coyote and Roadrunner that dragged on for more than a decade. Sixty letters went back and forth among Beaumont, St. Martin, and various contacts at the American Fur Company w...
Wallen, like Masters and Johnson, thinks it’s possible that a majority of the so-called vaginal orgasms being had during intercourse are in reality clitoral orgasms. But unlike Masters and Johnson, he...
To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your puny memory, your frame that...
The public filed past Elmer in his casket, looking every bit the soldier and nothing at all the decomposing body.
Pus can be distinguished from mucus, wrote Dr. Samuel Cooper in his 1823 Dictionary of Practical Surgery, by its sweetish mawkish taste and a smell peculiar to itself. To the doctor who is still strug...