Many years ago in Europe, people believed that an evil spirit was sweeping across the land. It killed people by the thousands. The deaths were agonizing and gruesome. Before long, the only sounds in the streets were the tolling of funeral bells and the wheels of carts carrying away the dead. Centuries later, several children in a small village in Peru became so frantic that they had to be tied to their beds. Some screamed in terror, while others foamed at the mouth. All of them had one thing in common: They had been bitten by vampire bats. After a woman last her ability to speak, tests revealed a dark spot in her brain. The good news? The spot was not a tumor. The bad news? The spot was a tapeworm, living in her brain. These and other true stories of medical mysteries and terrors await you inside Scary Medical Stories.
Excerpt: The human body is almost too amazing to be believed. Consider these facts: Our heart beats around 100,000 times a day, continuously pumping blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels. And we take more than 25,000 breaths a day. We do all this without even thinking about it. When we touch something, information about what we’ve touched races to our brain at about 240 miles an hour. And our brain holds five times more information than an entire set of encyclopedias. Our eyes can recognize close to one million different colors and shapes. A sneeze rockets dust out of our nose at nearly 100 miles an hour. Perhaps one of the most astounding things about the body is that it can repair itself. Except for our teeth, every bit of our body is living, growing tissue. More than 2 trillion new cells are formed in our body every day. So if we’re healthy, tissue can heal and rebuild itself when it’s broken or torn.
CUNY HSE Science Club 