The Anatomy of ‘Gray’s Anatomy’
This post follows the medical theme that was set in the last one; more specifically, the book ‘Gray’s Anatomy’. I was shocked to discover that this was a book! A collection of papers featuring words bound between a hard cover. Upon opening the book, I was able to ‘learn’ from the knowledge enscribed within!
Wonderful!
But seriously, I could read Gray’s Anatomy for days at a time. It’s a mixture of Henry Gray’s findings, coupled with surgical instructions for those who do a bit of grave-digging themselves! How useful! Technically I could now fix a cleft palatte with nothing more than a few knives and a pair of scissors! Admittedly the procedure is fatal to a living person, but if you die and feel the need to have a cleft palatte, I’ll dive on in there and fix it for you!
The book is incredible, though…even if you don’t care about medicine its worthy of a look! I don’t care about medicine but look at me! Looking! With my eyes!
Read it! Or I’ll stick power tools in your great longitudinal fissure, damn you!
A lecture on breasts, brains and the genetic make-up of the genders…
I was looking at pictures of Hillary Clinton and I found this. Incidentally I’m not suggesting that Mrs. Clinton lost her breasts in a red bag…the idea is quite amusing though…hmm.
I thought I’d share it with you, just because it managed to fill my nucleus accumbens with dopamine, resulting in a chemical reaction of laughter. This was definately laughter, and not cocaine, by the way (neurologists have proven that cocaine triggers a reaction in the same part of the brain as a joke…didn’t you know that?)
Basically, it suggests to me that a man in drag hobbled home having place his false breasts and one shoe in a bag. Just think that through for a moment. What ridiculous string of events caused that to happen?! Did he get a bit too chest heavy and decide to remove his breasts, then decide he was sick of not being lop-sided and so corrected the fault by removing a shoe? Where did the red bag come from? Presumably this would have been a well-thought out plan! Should this man be institutionalised for his mania? Was he lobotomised? Hmm…maybe.
Anyway, a RADICAL CHANGE OF TOPIC WILL NOW OCCUR! You have been warned! Prepare for a breakneck change…here it comes!
The brain.
Ouch, whiplash!
As you might have guessed from my comment about the nucleus accumbens, I have been reading up on neuroanatomy. Don’t ask why, and don’t reason that it has anything to do with finished my three season box-set of House M.D. either (what a marathon that was…). Apart from the humour centre, there is no central location of intelligence in the brain. It’s dotted all around, and not situated in the frontal lobe as was originally proposed. The only real fact about intelligence is to do with grey and white matter and the amounts assigned to the genders. Women have more white matter, and men have more grey. Grey matter is typically a sort of processing centre, while white matter is a communication link for processing. It generally explains multi-tasking, and why men are better at in-depth things like mathematics and women excel at more creative aspects of thinking. Oddly these two different parts are found in different locations in the brain…the matter is found more in the frontal lobe in women than in men, and the same with grey matter. By the way I’m not going anywhere with this.
But seriously, I could read scientific journals all day. I hate science, by the way, but there’s something delightfully insightful about the brain. It’s a lump of meat, yet its marvellously intricate…if I buy a pork chop, also a lump of meat, it won’t be able to do nearly as much maths as a brain, and if I buy a turkey at christmas I could easily out-think it. So naturally, I’ve grown curious as to why and have now added ‘futile medical research’ into my daily planner. It goes between ‘eating’ and ‘drinking heavily’.
I could never be a doctor of brains. All those wet folds to delve around in, and so delicate too! Why, for example, the patient file known medically as H.M. (I think that’s right…) whose hippcampus was intentionally ruined by scientists to see what would happen had amnesia for the rest of his life. Hmm. That’s why I don’t want to be a neurologist. Just give me the books, and leave the wet folds to the experts, I think.
