Rumbles
A Curious History of the Gut: The Secret Story of the Body's Most Fascinating Organ
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The fascinating—and often secret—history of the body's most fascinating system: the gut.
The stomach is notoriously outspoken. It growls, gurgles, and grumbles while other organs remain silent, inconspicuous, and content. For centuries humans have puzzled over this rowdy, often overzealous organ, deliberating on the extent of its influence over cognition, mental wellbeing and emotions, and wondering how the gut became so central to our sense of self.
Traveling from ancient Greece to Victorian England, eighteenth-century France to modern America, cultural historian Elsa Richardson leads us on a lively tour of the gut, exploring all the ways that we have imagined, theorized, and probed the mysteries of the gastroenterological system. We'll meet a wildly diverse cast of characters including Edwardian body builders, hunger-striking suffragettes, demons, medieval alchemists, and one poor teenage girl plagued by a remarkably vocal gut, all united by this singular organ.
Engaging, eye-opening, and thought-provoking, Rumbles leaves no stone unturned, scrutinising religious tracts and etiquette guides, satirical cartoons and political pamphlets, in its quest to answer the millennia-old question: Are we really ruled by our stomachs?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Richardson (Second Sight in the Nineteenth Century), a historian at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, serves up a piquant cultural history of the stomach. She explains that ancient Greek scholars believed anger, jealousy, and desire stemmed from the gut, and that Christian theologians sought to tame this rapaciousness by including gluttony among the deadly sins. The valorization of restraint led the ruling classes of the Middle Ages to develop strict table etiquette that frowned upon the previously common practice of eating with one's hands. Tracing how eating habits have evolved, Richardson notes that in medieval times, most people only ate two meals per day, with a large "dinner" falling around late morning. It wasn't until the rise of industrialized workdays for which workers commuted too far to return home to eat that the modest midday "lunch" emerged. Elsewhere, she discusses how dietary advice has changed over time, describing, for instance, how Russian microbiologist Élie Metchnikoff set off a "yogurt-eating frenzy" in the 1910s by suggesting the food could slow aging. Though the book's wide-ranging scope can occasionally come across as unfocused, the fascinating history means readers will be more than happy to come along for the ride. This satisfies. Photos.
