Is there any new theories as to the purpose of the appendix in humans, besides providing a simple surgury on which surgury residents can become proficient surgeons?
When I was growing up in a fundamentalist religious sect that denied that evolution takes place, they reported that the appendix serves some obscure antibiotic function in early infants.
I don’t know where they got that information (though I do know why they needed an explanation.) But who knows? I don’t think they invented it out of whole cloth. Perhaps they got the info from some other fundamentalists. But for whatever it’s worth, there you go.
Are you educated, erudite and maybe a bit eccentric?
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The appendix stores in it the need for humans to know which words end in -gry. Once it is removed, you have a need to ask this question. I’m glad I still have my appendix.
My mom went to the hospital last year for intestinal pain. They kept her for a week and did all sorts of tests on her, diagnosed it as diverticulits, and were going to do surgery, but her fever and (white?) blood count improved, so they released her. A couple weeks later she went to her regular doctor and he said she had gotten appendicitis. The appendix would probably shrivel up and go away by itself.
Wouldn’t you think modern medicine could correctly diagnose appendicitis?! Idiot doctors in the hospital. If it had ruptured she would have been in serious condition.
The appendix is one of the sources of white blood cells in the body. Coincidently, the tonsils are another source of white blood cells.
So, in light of Louie’s post, does my lack of tonsils and an appendix in any way affect my chances of survival should I get leukemia?
“So, in light of Louie’s post, does my lack of tonsils and an appendix in any way affect my chances of survival should I get leukemia?”
correct me if i’m wrong -which you most certainly will- but isn’t leukemia an excess of white blood cells, or leukocytes?
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
Kilgore Trout–just wanted to say that I really like your name!
The margarine of evil
My sister once told me that the appendix was used to help digest certain grains or grasses or something, when we ate crap like that a few thousand years ago.
She may have been misinformed, however.
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Cheese Head (re: mother’s appendicitis): Wouldn’t you think modern medicine could correctly diagnose appendicitis?! Idiot doctors in the hospital. If it had ruptured she would have been in serious condition.
My appendicitis wasn’t diagnosed until I was in the hospital for two days and was delirious. Before that they thought it was something wrong with my gall bladder. I had a whole series of X-rays, CAT scan done, but they didn’t find anything wrong.
On my second night, the nurse called in the doctors to figure out why I was going south. Then they figured out the appendicitis.
Mine sat really high, at about the level of my navel. Plus, I never had sharp pains in the lower right abdomen, but just a dull ache below my diaphram. All week I thought I just had stomach flu; the night before I was hospitalized I was drinking Maloxx straight.
The next day (a Friday the 13[sup]th[/sup], when I couldn’t walk out of my building without collapsing, I figured that something was seriously wrong.