The Body Electric

There is a tissue in your body that, until very recently, was thrown away. Dissectors scraped it off the muscle to get to the "important" parts. Anatomists labelled it inert packing material — the white, filmy stuff that holds the interesting bits in place. Textbooks gave it a single dismissive line. For roughly a century, the largest organ in your body was treated as scaffolding to be removed before the real anatomy could be seen. That tissue is fascia. And the people who scraped it off were, it turns out, throwing away the very thing that makes you one continuous, responsive, intelligent body rather than a bag of separate parts. This is a…