No one knows your body better than you do, so we tell ourselves. But that is generally based on the way we are feeling at any given moment. What’s causing those ‘feelings’ – aches, pains, sickness, racing heart, giddiness, burning sensations and the like, is another story.
Of course, nowadays, the second something doesn’t feel quite right inside, we go ask that clever Dr Google. Describe our symptoms in detail. Hope he’ll sympathetically say “It’s nothing to worry yourself about. Just take two paracetamol and get a good night’s sleep” Then we get paranoid and overly concerned when his newly appointed Ai assistant reels off a huge list indicating we could be suffering from virtually every known disease under the sun.
We break today’s short journey of 96K, just shy of our destination – Camping Op Hoop Van Zegen. Go visit the Corpus Museum. A 3.15pm pre-booked walk through of the human body. Fortunately it’s a dry run, so wellies aren’t required.
The museum is situated within the Leiden Bio Science Park – a picturesque combination of ultra modern buildings, allotments, pathways and cycle lanes, seamlessly blended, as only the Dutch do, alongside the road network.
With time to spare we take advantage of today’s tropical temperature – go exploring.
The one hour audio guided tour takes us on a journey through the digestive, blood and reproductive systems. A few special 3D side-shows thrown in for good measure, emphasise and aid memory recall. Aimed at young teenagers, mainly for educational purposes we suppose. First year Biology springs to mind. Bodily functions presented in an interesting, easy to understand and sometimes amusing way. The brain is given pride of place, naturally. Yet even this brilliant super-structure, described as the most complicated and sophisticated organism in the Cosmos, is capable of getting things very wrong. Visual perception a typical example . . .
Perhaps this predisposition can be explained by the fact that a human has 25,000 genes. The same number as a fruit fly, a worm and . . . a potato!