Since Ancient Period, humankind has sought to know guts inside us. Ancient Egyptians handled human organs as they removed them for embalming. Medical manuscripts found in an Ancient Chinese Tomb could also be the earliest-known anatomical writing about the human physical body . Thousands of years later, do we really know many organs are in human body?
Organs are collections of tissues that work together for a same or common goal, explained Lisa M.J. Lee, an professor in Department of Cell & Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine . “Every organ provides a function for human performance or survival,” she told Live Science.
But not every organ is important for survival. Only 5 organs — the brain, heart, liver, one kidney, and one lung are absolutely essential for living. Losing total function of any one of those vital organ spells death. Remarkably,human body can survive without a lot of other organs, or by replacing a non-functioning organ with medical device.
As for counting organs in human body , it depends on whom you ask and the way you count, Lee said. Although nobody knows where the no. originates, the overall count is 78 organs, she said. This list includes the vital organ: tongue, stomach, thyroid, urethra, pancreas, plus many other single or pairs of organ’s. Bones and teeth are each counted just once.
Among anatomists, viewpoints differ on what counts as an organ. A histologist like Lee, who studies tissue at the microscopic level, may have a long list of organs than a gross anatomist, who studies what’s visible to the unaided eye. for instance , scientists made headlines in 2017 for labeling the mesentery, which attaches the intestines to the wall , as an organ. albeit the scientists provided new evidence to call it an organ, it had been not controversial, as many histologists and anatomists agreed, Lee explained. But there is no group charged with keeping a official count of the organs or deciding what qualifies as an organ.
Thinking microscopically, when multiple sorts of tissues join together and work together, the unit is an organ, she said. Lee could call a nail, or structures that support the nail, an organ, and count each tooth as individual organ. “I would consider each bone an organ, and all 206 bones collectively together, is taken into account an organ system.” Because bones are already listed once on the list of 78, to urge a tally of the total number of organs using this definition, just add 205, for total of 284 organs.
