A few years ago, TikTok was consumed by guts. Gut health, that is!
Hashtag “GutTok” populated the social media app like … well, like Bacteroides in our colons.
GutTok brought the sexy back – and that’s saying something when you consider that the stomach was once considered to be a ”strangely wicked and ungrateful organ” by a well-regarded Victorian-era physician.
That last intriguing morsel comes from Elsa Richardson’s new book about the lore and legends of the gut, “Rumbles.”
Richardson, a lecturer on the history of medicine at a Scottish university, delves into ancient history, contemporary research and marvelous facts about the organs that grind up and expel the food we eat.
She notes that while we no longer believe that demons lurk in stomachs “... the modern stomach has become, for many alternative health practitioners, a source of corruption in the body, responsible for causing everything from migraines to asthma, eczema, chronic fatigue syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis.”
Mystery character answer: Jo from "Little Women."
— Kerri Miller
