Sagan

The five phases of matter. There are four natural states of matter: Solids, liquids, gases and plasma.

A definition of “matter” more fine-scale than the atoms and molecules definition is: matter is made up of what atoms and molecules are made of, meaning anything made of positively charged protons, neutral neutrons, and negatively charged electrons.

Everything in the universe (except energy) is made of matter, and, so, everything in the universe is made of atoms. An atom itself is made up of three tiny kinds of particles called subatomic particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons.

About 99 percent of your body is made up of atoms of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. If we lost all the dead space inside our atoms, we would each be able to fit into a particle of lead dust, and the entire human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube.

femur

3rd century B.C.

Greek anatomist herophilus: the father of anatomy. Anat Cell Biol. 2010 Dec;43(4):280-3.

Andreas Vesalius

Herophilos

With the advent of new imaging modalities at the microscopic level, anatomy can be rediscovered with many clinical implications and thus be restored to its glory days. Anatomy is still relevant – and certainly not dead – as long as we possess and emulate the thirst for knowledge that our predecessor anatomists had.

Dissection and studies of anatomy were banned in the Middle Ages out of the belief that it desecrated a person’s body and prevented them from entering heaven intact. The teachings of the medieval Church held that a person should be buried whole and intact, otherwise they would be doomed to an incomplete afterlife.

Even though the Catholic Church prohibited dissection, artists and scientists performed dissection to better understand the body. Renaissance artists were anxious to gain specialized knowledge of the inner workings of the human body, which would allow them to paint and sculpt the body in many different positions.

Well, every year, millions of frogs are stolen from their homes in the wild, transported across long distances, killed, and pumped full of embalming chemicals (chemicals used to preserve their dead bodies) so they can be used for classroom dissection. …

Genesis. The Black Death was an epidemic which ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1400. It was a disease spread through contact with animals (zoonosis), basically through fleas and other rat parasites (at that time, rats often coexisted with humans, thus allowing the disease to spread so quickly).

Plague is divided into three main types — bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic — depending on which part of your body is involved. Signs and symptoms vary depending on the type of plague.

How did it end? The most popular theory of how the plague ended is through the implementation of quarantines. The uninfected would typically remain in their homes and only leave when it was necessary, while those who could afford to do so would leave the more densely populated areas and live in greater isolation.

Some of the cures they tried included: Rubbing onions, herbs or a chopped up snake (if available) on the boils or cutting up a pigeon and rubbing it over an infected body. Drinking vinegar, eating crushed minerals, arsenic, mercury or even ten-year-old treacle!