In November 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen uncovered X‑rays. Five years later he was awarded the Nobel Prize. The unseen was suddenly exposed. Modern surgery began in that instant when Röntgen’s cathode rays laid bare what had always been there, waiting in the dark. https://t.co/5CTJFsA5QI
Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant. The patient, Louis Washkansky, lived eighteen days. Within months, other surgeons attempted transplants worldwide. Today, over three thousand heart transplants happen annually.
https://t.co/5CTJFsA5QI
The first successful kidney transplant wasn't in 1954.
It was in 1950. Richard Lawler grafted a cadaveric kidney into Ruth Tucker's abdomen and it functioned for nearly ten months.
Tucker lived nine more years.
In 1842, Long removed neck tumors under ether anesthesia and documented the procedure carefully.
But he didn't publish his findings immediately. By the time he did, Morton had already orchestrated the theatrical demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Trepanation is the oldest known surgical procedure.
Studies in the Journal of Surgical Research
show survival rates as high as ninety percent
in some Bronze Age cultures.
[1] Crawford Long - First successful use of anesthesia in surgery (1842)
https://t.co/8qtOmvfg14
When the brain "reboots" after deep general anaesthesia, abstract problem-solving recovers before basic reaction time. Researchers suggest this makes evolutionary sense — higher-order cognition is most critical for survival upon waking. https://t.co/5CTJFsA5QI
Your skeleton completely replaces itself approximately every 10 years through continuous bone remodelling. Osteoclasts break down old bone while osteoblasts build new bone in an ongoing cycle, you're walking around on an entirely different set of bones. https://t.co/5CTJFsA5QI
The human body literally emits visible light that follows a circadian rhythm, peaking around 4pm and dimmest late at night. The face glows brightest, particularly the cheeks. This biophoton emission is about 1,000 times too dim for the naked eye, https://t.co/5CTJFsA5QI
A 2025 study in Nature Human Behaviour found that under general anaesthesia, your brain loses its unique neural "fingerprint" and starts to resemble a primate brain. The most uniquely human brain regions are the most affected. https://t.co/5CTJFsA5QI
Rotationplasty is a reconstructive surgical procedure—often called a Van Nes rotation or Borggreve procedure - that acts as an alternative to above-knee amputation, primarily in children with bone cancer near the knee.
The liver is the only solid internal organ that fully regenerates. It can re-grow to full functional size from as little as 25% of its original mass.
if your head uses a scrub cap then check out https://t.co/5CTJFsA5QI
In 2018, researchers described the interstitium, a network of fluid-filled compartments running under the skin, around the gut, lungs, and blood vessels.
This can potentially be classed as the body's 80th organ, hiding in plain sight. https://t.co/5CTJFsA5QI