The “love handles” around your middle kind of bother you.
Heavy sigh. You’d like them gone but dental work is taking all your money for now. If you were honest, you’d have that balding spot fixed, too – and don’t forget new knees, which you’ll need soon enough. As in the new book, “Replaceable You” by Mary Roach, are you falling apart or, like Humpty Dumpty, are you being put together again?
Poor old George Washington.
Most of his portraits portray him as a grump but there’s a reason: George’s false teeth hurt his mouth something terrible; even keeping his lips together was difficult. No doubt, he’d be amazed at what dentists do with implants these days.
But teeth, of course, aren’t the only things we tinker with.
Take, for instance, noses.
Once was a time when losing a nose was big punishment or a front-and-center sign of diseases that no one wanted to catch. Sufferers were shunned either way, so devices were made to fashion a nose-ish nose but they looked a lot like Groucho glasses. Using the skin from animals was tried, but it wasn’t permanent enough.
Enter rhinoplasty, one of the first plastic surgeries.
Doctors weren’t done with animals, though. To fix or save lives, attempts were made using donor animals including sheep, dogs, frogs, and pigs, the latter of which may surprise you. As it turns out; pig hearts can be transplanted to needful humans and their skin can help burn victims if self-donating isn’t an option. Pigs, in fact, can be genetically modified for tissue or organ donor use.
Ostomies can make a person’s life better, and the colon isn’t just for elimination. Amputation isn’t always unwanted, woodworkers and orthopedists have a lot in common, and one must be wary of sourcing hair transplants.
As for organ donating, says Roach, it’s tricky – so tricky, it’s a wonder that it works.
Swap it out.
Those are words you may hear at least once a week. Tech doesn’t work? Swap it out. The delight inside “Replaceable You” is that swapping out is infinitely possible in everyday life, to help, to enhance, and to save.
The science in medicine can be complicated, but no problem: author Mary Roach teaches readers as she learns, which makes things easier to understand. Roach writes to readers, not at them, thus putting you in the action alongside her.
Her hands-on way of research also makes this makes science fun, too, as she volunteers for a few of the procedures she writes about, and she takes us along on trips around the world to view where work in various relevant scientific fields is done. This also takes some of the stigma out of procedures we don’t discuss much, and it makes the fear melt away, too.
Readers who grew up on The Six Million Dollar Man or The Bionic Woman, and those who’ve had a procedure or two done will enjoy “Replaceable You.” For sure, if you love science and want to learn something fun, you can handle it.
“Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy” by Mary Roach
c.2025, W.W. Norton & Company
$28.99
288 pages
