"Book of Organs: The Body Story of Writers"
Wellcome Museum, UK Edited by
Zhou Jiaxin Translated by
Square Inch | Social Sciences Literature Press Published by
Under our skin and bones are different organs, from the digestive tract that provides nutrients, the expanding lungs to the filtered kidneys, these and other organs maintain our lives together with other organs. However, we know very little about them, and this book will tell these stories about the body. I hope to clarify the situation of a person by examining the unique parts of the human body. Although each article has a different author, it revolves around a same topic: How exactly do these different human parts (organs and glands) make us who we are?
15 world-class writers and medical experts have chosen different organs to tell the awkward medical knowledge with beautiful and charming words. Including Naomi Alderman, the winner of the Bailey Women's Novel Award, dismantled the digestive tract and human obsession with food; A.L. Needy leads people into the world of nose and smell; Philip Kerr traces the extraordinary history of brain surgery; Ned Bowman, the winner of the Maugham Literature, tells the story of appendix that may not be as useless as we imagined; Thomas Lynch praises the miracle created by uterus ... This book will be a moving, humorous and charming text journey, leading readers to travel through the mysterious and unforgettable internal world of the human body.
Inscriptions are selected and read
gallbladder
William Fiennes
Two years ago when I was in Warsaw , the first night I felt a huge feeling of oppression that lasted for a long time appeared under my sternum. I lay on the bed and kept changing my posture, or got up and walked around the room, trying to take deep breaths as much as possible, but I still felt like an invisible fist pressing against my chest. I mumbled and moaned from the pain, unable to sleep all night. I guess it might be a serious indigestion.
The next day, I need to give a class to a group of young Polish playwrights. The pain disappeared later, but I only slept for about 45 minutes. Although my mind and language are a little sluggish, I am glad I no longer feel pain and look forward to working with the geniuses of the Polish Theatre for the coming week.
However, after returning to the hotel room at night, the pain of returning was as severe as the previous night. For a whole week, the pain came over and over night like an unwelcome visitor; a deep and continuous blow that may sometimes ease for a few minutes, and sometimes I could even nap for a while, but always made a comeback with the same ruthless force. It's puzzling, but thankfully, I don't feel pain during the day. But as the week passed, I was in a state of sleep deprivation that was about to cause hallucinations, and simply gave up eating, hoping that without eating, I could alleviate the indigestion.
On the last morning in Warsaw, there were pairs of yellow eyes staring back at me in the bathroom mirror. And I noticed that the skin all over my body began to turn yellow, my urine almost turned brown, and my feces were nearly chalky. I have jaundice symptoms. I quickly searched Google and was convinced that I needed to upgrade my self-diagnosis from indigestion to some kind of advanced cancer . A driver came to my hotel in Warsaw to take me to the airport. I couldn't help but wonder if he noticed that I was yellowing all over? I observed him carefully but had no idea. During the driving period, snowflakes began to float outside; it was not rain and snow, but thick large white snowflakes. By the time of the airport, it had turned into a blizzard, so big that it was so big that it could not see the five fingers in front of you.
I immediately rushed to the check-in counter and asked timidly (and thinking that I might have to go to a hospital in Warsaw now): "Is the plane still possible to take off?" I have probably heard that the British airport would close immediately because of a thin layer of snow. The stewardess of Polish Airlines couldn't help but snorted and said, "Of course the plane will take off."
After the plane landed at Heathrow Airport in the UK, I immediately called a taxi to take off to the hospital's emergency room.
"is gallstone ." A doctor said to me.
"So it's not cancer?"
"Well, no, it's definitely not cancer. We will send you to the ward upstairs to rest now, and we will have surgery to remove gallstones from your pancreas tomorrow morning. The operation should end around noon."
"Good morning, I'm your surgeon." A doctor said hello to me the next day. "I will check for gallstones first. In addition, since we have already performed surgery here, then remove the gallbladder by the way." He said, "Once the stones enter other parts of the body, it means that it is likely to happen again in the future. Why not deal with it together."
"Removing the gallbladder? Can I still live a normal life in the future?"
"Oh, of course, the gallbladder is a completely useless thing. Since there may be problems with the gallbladder in the future, it is best to remove it once and for all. I will see you later, but you won't see me."
I picked up my phone and wanted to use Google to check the "bile" and "gallbladder", but found that the phone was out of power. Is the gallbladder really useless? Isn’t bile a body fluid that was once recognized as an important one? Bile - I tried to recall the university course on the world of Tillyyard that I took a long time ago on the Elizabeth period - is one of the body fluids, isn't it? Yes, that's true. Blood, mucus, bile, well... and something, once recognized as four types of body fluids that keep flowing in the human body, and the balance of these four types of body fluids is related to physiological and mental health.
Alas, the end of the gallbladder is really sad! Just centuries ago, the gallbladder was still responsible for injecting one of the four major body fluids into the important organs throughout the body, but now it can be removed by short-term minimally invasive surgery. Then, I guess it was probably taken to somewhere behind the hospital to incinerate and destroy.
When I was preparing to write this article, I went to University College London Hospital to interview surgeon Andrew Jenkinson. He arranged for me to go to the operating room to watch the entire process of cholecystectomy , and when he sent a message early in the morning on the day of the operation, he told me that the gallbladder surgery needed to be postponed, I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. The delay was due to an emergency operation suddenly. A patient who had installed the gastric belt a few months ago suffered serious complications. Due to the distorted and deformed gastric belt, she went from being overweight to underweight in about a year, and was on the verge of danger, and quickly became the number one patient on the list of surgery. So there was no surgery suitable for me to watch that day.
(Photo source: Visual China)
When Dr. Jenkinson was about to finish his work that day, I met him in the restaurant in the hospital. He chewed nicotine gum and asked me, "Do you want one?" Then he scribble a picture to explain to me the function of the digestive system and the role of the gallbladder in it. He first drew a person's stomach and reminded me that the stomach is actually much higher in my body, about above the abdomen I identified, which surprised me. Next, I drew the liver (I didn't expect it to be so big), and the gallbladder like a small deflated balloon is located under the liver.
The human body secretes bile (gall, or what we now call bile) to break down high-fat foods in the stomach. The gallbladder itself does not secrete bile. The bile actually comes from the liver, and the gallbladder is responsible for work similar to pumps. For example, if you eat a super large four-fold cheese pizza, the body needs to deliver bile to the stomach immediately, and the gallbladder will start working and send the bile to break down the cheese. However, the bile stored in the gallbladder may crystallize and form gallstones; gallstones accumulate in the gallbladder will only make people feel uncomfortable, but once they run out of the gallbladder, it will cause liver obstruction, or a condition like my pancreas. This makes the situation very difficult.
Therefore, compared to me who still has gallbladder, is it difficult for me to break down fat now? “It is evidence that a very small number of cholecystectomy patients will experience diarrhea,” Jenkinson told me, “because their bodies no longer break down fat as effectively as they used to be, but it is very rare."
" So why does the human body have such an optional organ? "I asked. I thought evolution was to ensure that humans could have an efficient and almost utilitarian body. In this regard, Jenkinson told me that it was because the development of human civilization had far exceeded the speed of human evolution. In terms of digestion, human evolution has not yet caught up with the farming life that began tens of thousands of years ago, and our digestive system is still at the stage of hunter-gathering.
Jenkinson explained that people in the hunter-gathering period did not eat almost continuously like modern people. It was the norm in the old days when they were eating a big meal or hunger. Maybe they would be slaughtered in a week. A bison, which means that humans will eat a lot of protein and fat quite quickly, and the auxiliary effect of the gallbladder really comes in handy at this time. A fruit meal may come in a few days, but it may take a while before you need to break down a lot of fat again for energy storage.
So, if medicine really advances to the stage where you can remove the gallbladder by pressing a button, would Jenkinson recommend everyone to remove the gallbladder? "If we can guarantee that there will be no complications," he said, "I would recommend it like this. "
...
Recently, I talked with a female friend in the United States. She was considering whether to undergo a preventive bilateral mastectomy. She did not have any signs of breast cancer , but when she thought about her family history, she thought that she would be better without breasts. Several of her female friends had already undergone the same surgery. I nodded to express my support for her decision, resisted my intuitive reaction without saying to her: Isn't your breasts an important part of yourself as a woman and beauty? Can you really cut off your cancer-free breasts like this? "Breasts are useless to me now," she said with a smile with a hint of sadness, "Maybe it just cut off for safety reasons! "
Because the gallbladder or appendix has long lost its symbolic or cultural importance to us, it is relatively easy to decide to abandon them. However, as medical technology becomes more and more sophisticated, we will face some troubles. What parts of us are medically, psychologically and emotionally indispensable? Am I my body? How many parts are I want or need?
Editor's Profile
Wellcome Museum in the UK Collection), a museum and library located in London, England, was created by the famous pharmacist and entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome. The museum houses various objects about "people" and "human bodies", including books on medical and health, various medical devices, teaching molds, from ancient witchcraft ritual objects to modern full set of surgical equipment, and even Napoleon toothbrush, Nightingale slippers, Darwin stick and other interesting antiques. The museum is committed to becoming a "free destination for those hopeless curious curious people".
Author: William Fiennes
Editor: Jin Jiuchao
