That was a super interesting read. Another factor that's probably missing is a weird form of prudeness/sexism. I remember reading articles years ago about new discoveries about the clitoris, and thinkig "how the fuck was this missed", or the debate around the existance of the G-spot, or the existence (or not) of female ejaculate. I suspect there's more female anatomy left to be discovered/described than male.
In addition to the appendix, my go to example of this is my friend's favourite organ: the Thymus [1]! If you've heard of "T-Cells" you indirectly know about it.
The interesting thing is that it is in a human when they are born, grows until puberty, then gets smaller and smaller until it can be quite small and difficult to detect in a grown adult.
I can imagine medical explorers cutting open dead 40 year olds in the year 1900, probably not finding any obvious organ there -- while perhaps cutting open dead children may have been a lot less common (and perhaps distasteful). If you did find something there, you would not assume an important organ present in a child and essential for their immune system would shrink and almost go away.
It would be more likely to be labelled nothing, an abnormal growth, or even a cause for death or illness (pressure on the heart/lungs!).
The thymus is amazing... I ignored it for a long time then saw an amazing seminar. The thymus plays an important role in training the immune system: it expresses cells similar to cells all over the body, and then "educates" T-cells to avoid attacking those. Failures of the thymus often lead to autoimmune disorders.
I dunno. Comparative anatomy was a thing then and the anatomist may even have been fond of sweetbreads. They were still popular on menus in Paris when I was there a few months ago. It's possible they were more notable for their absence in adult humans.
Maybe, but I think more likely is the time factor for med students. There’s really only time to find the major structures implicated in disease. Surgeons also not likely dissecting around the clitoris much. Wouldn’t want to risk injury obviously.
I also think it is great to call out that not all 'missing' things like this are a conspiracy, it is just inefficiencies, or competing goals of different groups.
"No shadowy Illuminati group deliberately made this decision, but as a civilization we have collectively ‘decided’ that three groups of people would get to peer inside the human body, and they’d all be hobbled."
Oh indeed, I don't think there's a shadowy cabal suppressing the knowledge of the existence of our third eye or anything like that. But in the past, the long arm of the catholic church certainly had a chilling effect on some research.
Like the guy who built some of the first microscopes and discovered the sperm in semen, he wrote to the scientific community to discuss the discovery, but made sure to include that the semen he used was "what was left" after he copulated with his wife. Wouldn't want to give anyone the idea that he had masturbated, heaven forfend!
You’re looking at this from a point of view with inherent bias, that has no guarantee of being lesser in degree than the ones that produced the literature.
You're looking at this from the point of view that bias is inherently bad. It's not. Biases do not need to be "lesser in degree" to allow adding something new to a conversation. They only need to be different from existing ones.
Hmm, I spent some time thinking about this comment, and I still don't get your point. Does my bias invalidate my claim? I mean I don't have any hard evidence that this is happening, but from a historical point is makes sense to me. If you disagree, it would be helpful to point out why, rather than to call out my bias.
