Vital Organs: A History of the World's Most Famous Body Parts

by Suzie Edge

From Napoleon's penis to Van Gogh's ear, from Marie Antoinette's teeth to Marie Curie's bone marrow, this book brings together the remarkable stories of body parts that have made history.

We have always used and abused bodies. We've torn them apart, dug them up, experimented on them or taken bits home to display as trophies. Body parts have been used for propaganda in wars and pulled off in punishment. They've answered medical mysteries, been turned into relics and even saved lives.

Now TikTok sensation and medical historian, Dr Suzie Edge, brings us a history of the world's most famous body parts told through its most notable limbs, organs, and appendages, including how Queen Victoria's armpit led the development of antiseptics; why Percy Shelley's heart refused to burn; and the strange case of Hitler's right testicle.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Science, Audiobook, Medicine, Historical, Death

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2023

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's no secret that I am a massive fan of Suzie Edge. Her TikTok and Instagram accounts are huge favourites of mine, and we also share a mutual appreciation for the acting abilities of James Purefoy.....

This brilliant book showcases Suzie's trademark wit, warmth, intelligence and attention to detail, and is full of astonishing tales. Truth truly is stranger than fiction!

Outstandingly good.

[Daniel W · Rating 4 out of 5]

An accessible, digestible selection of stories from across history, taking you from head to toe through the human body via famous (and not so famous) figures. Suzie Edge has clearly had fun putting this book together, and the range of people featured gives it a strong through line - you don’t have to be interested in royal history to find a chapter that fascinates you here. Her part-medical, part-historical approach gives it something different, and helps explain why people have always had such an interest in their own - and other people’s - body parts. Recommended for any friends who like their history with the grisly bits left in.

[Beachcomber · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Interesting and funny, this has a similar approachable tone to Bill Bryson’s writing, and would appeal to anyone interested in medicine, science and history.

[Tracey Allen at Carpe Librum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vital Organs - A History of the World's Most Famous Body Parts by Suzie Edge has a nifty concept to pull in readers eager to discover the quirky stories behind 'history's most famous limbs, organs, and appendages'. With creatively titled chapter headings like Queen Victoria's Armpit (Chapter 16), King Louis' Fistula (Chapter 25) and Napoleon's Pen*s (Chapter 32), medical doctor and historian Suzie Edge grabs your attention and provides an interesting conversational style overview of each case, supported by history and science.

Listening on audiobook and narrated by the author, I enjoyed learning about Miss Emily Wilding Davison's Skull in Chapter 3, while cases I was already familiar with still entertained. Alexis St. Martin survived being shot in the stomach and after undergoing lifesaving surgery, the open wound failed to heal closed. This wound created a 'window' of sorts directly into the stomach, allowing an Army surgeon to study the digestive process for years afterwards.

Chapter 10 was a dazzling deep dive into dental health, looking at the famous Habsburg Jaw acquired after centuries of inbreeding; Marie Antoinette's early form of braces; George Washington's gum disease and false teeth made from ivory and stolen teeth from slaves; and teeth stripped from dead soldiers laying on Napoleonic battlefields known as Waterloo teeth.

If that wasn't suitably informative and enGROSSing enough for you, Chapter 38 Yao Niang's Toes was all about Chinese foot binding, yes please! I've always been fascinated by the ancient Chinese practice of foot binding, an interest recently renewed when I read Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See last year and further satisfied here.

In the author's own words, Suzie Edge tells stories about 'gory human body history' and this has made her a sensation on Tik Tok. I'm not a regular user of TikTok or BookTok - an online community focussing on books and literature - but this isn't the first time I've read a book or listened to an audiobook about medical history.

Some of you might remember and/or enjoy:
The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
Bizarre: The Most Peculiar Cases of Human Behavior and What They Tell Us about How the Brain Works by Marc Dingman
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty
Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science by Erika Engelhaupt
The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul by Eleanor Herman
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

With a few books of this nature still waiting for me on my TBR, including Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson, I'm also keen to read the author's book on Royals in Mortal Monarchs: 1000 Years of Royal Deaths as well as her upcoming release, History Stinks!: Poo Through the Ages.

In Vital Organs, Suzie Edge condenses vast amounts of history into short sharp chapters making the history engaging and digestible in a readily accessible writing style and I recommend it to non fiction readers with an interest in history, medical history and anatomy.

[Katy Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating details for those (like me) who like gory biology detail in historical context.

Very much like Mortal Monarchs for me - real people and stories, the graphic details of their body parts (not as many deaths in this one, or as many kings - a few though!).

I really enjoyed the mixture again of history and biology, and while some of it goes over my head (and I have Biology A-Level), I still appreciated the insight and stories.

So Einstein's brain, Pepys' bladder, Captain Oates' feet, Shelley's heart - we are taken on a tour of the body and how it works - and often stops working, in historical contexts of stories that are often famous, and sometimes much lesser known.

Loved the style, loved the author narrating this, made a great audiobook, a bit at a time.

[Jessica - How Jessica Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just the sort of interesting, fairly trivial history that I like. A series of stories and anecdotes about historical people who had injuries to various vital organs. Since it is heavy on the medical history, just don't listen to it while you're eating. ;)

But Suzie Edge (who is one of my favorites on Tiktok) narrates the book herself, so it's very enjoyable to listen to snippets. I read it here and there over the course of a week.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the history of medicine featuring fun case studies will always be my nerdy niche

[Neridan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun book with interesting stories about a wealth of various famous organs. Recommended if you’re looking for a good and morbid read.

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was very entertaining to read and really interesting. It focuses on history and bodily anatomy while also bringing to light the dark history of some popular known bodily parts.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting as always. Love this author.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. So much information about certain body parts of famous people. I enjoyed reading this, yes, I know, I have a very weird idea of what is considered good reading. I like the weird.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love medical stories especially medical history. This is a fun nonfiction with interesting stories of what happened to the various body parts of historical figures due to illness and injury. I found it very fun and easy reading but probably not likable for the squeamish or those with no interest in anatomy. For me, though, I say “cool!”

[Betsey's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vital Organs, by Suzie Edge. Four stars. 🌟🌟🌟🌟
It's exactly what the subtitle says, a history of famous body parts, from Albert Einstein's brain and Tycho Brahe's nose to Galileo's middle finger and Henrietta Lacks' cervical cells. Very informative, doesn't take itself too seriously, and wasn't too gory. I definitely recommend it.

[Eleanor Waight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of stories about the organs and body parts of the famous and not so. Everything from Marie curie’s bone marrow to Hitler’s testicle.

[Saimi Korhonen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Stories of body parts change how we see the world. All too often, historical figures feel distant and abstract, more myth and legend than real flesh and blood. The stories of their bodies and their parts, however, bring them back into focus and remind us that they were real, breathing creatures who inhabited organs and limbs just like we do - until they were cut off, that is."

Suzie Edge's book Vital Organs explores the history of medicine and the body through the lense of some of history's most famous body parts. This book introduces you to everything from Frida Kahlo's iconic eyebrows and Marie Curie's damaged bone marrow to the adventures of Napoleon's cut-off penis and Jack Kerouac's diseased liver. Before I go deeper in my review, I have to say, immediately, that if you are a more sensitive history nerd, do not pick this book up, as the stories are often very gruesome (unsurprisingly, since we are dealing with detached, diseased and brutalised body parts for the most part).

I really liked this book. I picked it up after listening to an interview of Suzie Edge cause the idea of a history book all about the body and specific body parts seemed hella intriguing. My one studies and research focuses a lot on the human body and how it has been understood, and I have a fondness for medical history, so it was a given I would enjoy this book. Some of the stories that Edge tells us are more humorous in tone (her writing is very light and easy-to-read even though she has to explain some really tough, even appalling stuff) but for the most part the stories are, if not outright dreadful, than at least very uncomfortable or sad. The history of medicine is inextricably linked to, for example, women's history, history of racism, disability history and war history, and all of these fields of history are littered with atrocities and injustices. When reading this book, you learn about the way disabled people have been treated, how medicine and doctors have often failed women and how deeply rooted racism is in the fields of science and medicine, and how black and brown bodies have been treated as expendable and taken advantage of (the story of Henrietta Lacks and her cervical cells are a good example of this). Bodies of indigenous cultures have also been treated abysmally by Europeans and Americans. A horrifying example of this was the collecting of Mokomakai heads from Maori communities and how, when there were no more Mokomakai to steal, slavers made new heads by killing and tattooing their slaves. All of this was just disgusting, but, hey, that's history.

One recurring theme throughout the book and the centuries it encompasses is that of consent and specifically how modern our idea of bodily autonomy and consent is. Time and time again, Edge writes about how the people in her stories were dissected after their death (Einstein's brain, even though he demanded his body be left intact after death), their parts displayed in museums against their explicit wishes (Charles Byrne, for example) and their bodies used and prodded. Medical practitioners used the poor and the weak to experiment (like the doctor who practiced on the sick and the poor before operating on the Sun King cause it's better those "worthless" people die than the king), and even paid people to snatch remains from morgues or dig up graves so they have material to work on. Criminals' bodies used to be given to hospitals and universities to be dissected as a form of punishment: if they were dissected, they would not be able to gain access to Heaven. All of this was very upsetting to read because you get a real good sense of just how skewed our view of bodily autonomy and people's right to be laid to rest in peace has always been. It also showcased how many major leaps forward in the field of medicine were accomplished through exploitation of either living people or those who had already died.

It has always intrigued me to learn how people accepted or fought against new developments or findings in the field of medicine. Something that binds nearly every story of a doctor discovering something major involves their colleagues calling them an idiot and refusing to do as they suggest. It seems to be something innately human to kick back against something new because it is weird or because you don't understanding or because it might force you to accept that you do not know everything. Ignaz Semmelweis, who figured out that less women died after birth if the doctors who helped them washed their hands after leaving the morgue to go an assist in childbirth, but he was ridiculed, abused and even locked, by his colleagues, in an insane asylum, where he died. Louis Braille, the blind man who created the Braille system, faced a lot of backlash and died before his invention really got going. It made me sad time and time again to read how someone figured out something important but was told their invention was stupid only for it to become huge later on, often after their death, and go on to save so many lives.

But not every story is morally heinous and disgusting. There's stories like that of the first ever kidney transplant done between identical twins that was a major success. There's the story of Frida Kahlo who was unashamedly herself, breaking all kinds of bodily stereotypes for women of her time. Braille's story has its sadder beats, but he created something incredible and worth celebrating, as did suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, who died of a head injury as she attempted to stage a demonstration at a riding event. One of my favorite stories that nearly made me cry (for reasons not quite known to me) was that of Mallory and Irvine, two men who attempted to climb Mount Everest but were lost. Something about Mallory being found, in the snow and ice, but us never finding out if they made it to the top and were coming down, or if they were still climbing up when he was injured got to me. I like to believe they made it to the top of the world.

One of the most interesting themes Edge explores is how we seem to have a need to make everyone we deem as morally questionable or downright villainous into somehow weird body-wise, just like we seem to like to attach weird sexual practices, fetishes or desires on figures of history we deem as dangerous. There is no solid evidence for Hitler having just one testicle, but it is an enduring story, just as his excrement fetish is. When Putin attacked Ukraine, people immediately began to speculate he was ill due to some images that may or may not have been edited. Why is it that we need for people who do bad things to be sick or disabled? Do we think that somehow explains it or gives them a reason to act in abhorrent ways? Is it easier to think of them as "not normal"? There is a fine line, I think, between saying that Kaiser Wilhelm's disability caused him to feel inferior and made him bitter and stating that it is because he was disabled that he helped start a world war. This kind of thinking leads too easily to full-on ableism and demonisation of anyone who doesn't fit our very narrow idea of normal.

Here are some random facts I learned and want to share:

- The Sun King's heart was stolen during the revolution and a part of it ended up as a snack for an eccentric zoologist and geologist with a penchant for exotic foods.

- Napoleon's penis was cut off, for reasons unknown, by the doctor who performed his autopsy and now resides in America, in an attic or a warehouse.

- What is claimed to be Rasputin's penis is on show in Russia.

- Bones of French soldiers who died in Waterloo were shipped off to England to be used as fertilizers for cabbages. This is not the only time bones have been used as fertiliser.

- The practice of binding books with human skin is called anthropodermic bibliopegy.

- One origin story for the British national anthem is that the composer heard some French people sing a song about the Sun King surviving his bum fistulae operation: he liked the melody and used it to create God Save the King/Queen.

- By the time of Washington's first inauguration he only had one tooth left. He used dentures made out of ivory, lead and human / animal teeth.

- Americans took Mussolini's brain to study after he was executed because of course they did.

I would recommend this book happily to anyone interested in the history of medicine and medical practices and for people who want to learn more about how we have, throughout history, understood and approached the body as both a physical thing and an idea. I learned a lot but was also thoroughly entertained by Edge's fun style of writing and witty narrative voice.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

In ‘Vital Organs’, Suzie Edge discusses 37 of history’s most famous body parts. She discusses how these famous people’s body parts changed and impacted history regarding health education and how these body parts were used, abused, stored and displayed.

”If we could teach more young girls to understand the importance of just being the person they want to be, the world and our places within it would be very different.”

I LOVED this book. With the mix between fun, historical facts, medical science and clearly educational medical knowledge, I was in my element. I enjoyed the fact that this book spoke in-depth about many physiological processes that was linked which each of the body parts. As someone who has read a lot of medical books, this could have been very repetitive with information I already knew, yet it was written in a fun, educational way that felt new and interesting.

[Georgi_Lvs_Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Stories of body parts change how we see the world.’

A mixture of being intrigued and at times slightly disturbed!

Vital Organs is a must read for any medical, history and non-fiction reader.

We read about 40 cases from Albert Einstein’s brain, to William Burke’s Skin and Freddie Mercury’s white blood cells.

Very compelling and no surprise here but it has added more books to my TBR.

I’m excited to read more from Suzie :)

[Tabitha Peverley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved her first book and I loved this one too. Incredibly educational, I learned so much about how the body works through the stories she tells, but she manages to make it humorous. Brilliant.

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

A absolutely brilliant second book from Suzie. A few bits I knew, a few bits I'd heard about but tons were new to me.

My favourite line ' censorship is for religions and dictators'.

Can't wait to see what she does next.

[Ghada · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun read to pass time in my car

[Taksya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seguo da tempo Suzie Edge sui vari social e non è passato molto tempo prima che mi decidessi a comprare i suoi libri.
Avevo già letto la versione kindle di Mortal Monarchs: 1000 Years of Royal Deaths, passando tutta la lettura sentendo la sua voce nelle orecchie... non è stato difficile propendere per la versione audio del suo secondo libro per adulti (ne esistono tre, illustrati, dedicati ad un pubblico più giovane), ed è stata una decisione vincente.
Le storie raccontate spaziano tra personaggi famosi ed eventi storici più o meno noti, raccontando il destino dei pezzi anatomici sottratti ai vari nomi celebri.
Da Washington a Napoleone, da Marie Curie a Einstein, senza escludere esploratori come Mallory e Messner o artisti come Frida Kahlo e Kerouac... sono molti i personaggi a cui hanno sottratto dei campioni o i cui organi hanno solo un ruolo importante nella loro vita o facilitato la loro morte.
Una lettura interessante e veloce, che permette di scoprire aneddoti spesso trascurati dalle fonti storiche più tradizionali.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to my dissertation, I've been on a massive corporeality kick and this was a great read to satiate my peaked interest in the human body (although on a slightly less 17th-century macabre note). I went into this thinking that the tone of each chapter would be a blend of medical professionalism and historical insight, and whilst they were certainly those things, this book was also infused with a lot of heart (pun-intended) and humour, which is often inevitable when talking about how fashionable fistula operations became. I also really appreciated Edge's acknowledgment that the body, in all of its representations, treatments and very existence, is inseparable from socio-political climates. A lot of the analysis done came with a commentary on the historical mistreatment and subjugation of bodies, particularly female, disabled and POC bodies.

The structure of the overall book quite literally goes from head-to-toe, charting different parts of the body that are historically weighted. My only wish is for the chapters to be longer. We whizzed through so many people that I was eager to spend more time with each individual.

All in all, this was an interesting read that hopefully will work in getting me out of a miserable reading slump.

[Tammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second Suzie Edge book, and as before with the Mortal Monarchs book, it was profoundly interesting and very well written. All the little cut off stories through a chapter do not feel cumbersome or pointless.
Honestly this is history at its best, when it feels more conversational and less like a lecture. It is always best when it feels like you're having a little gossip about it (in my opinion).
Edge is definitely not a stuffy history writer, her flow and pace are basically genius! So far, with the two of her books I've read, I have not once felt bored or uninterested in what I was reading.
I can only hope Edge writes more books like these because it feels like you're peaking behind the curtain of history to interesting and possibly less told events of (yes historical and famous) people, in the end that's what these historical figures were. They were you and me but struggling through, as highlighted in this book, medical inadequacies. We often forget that history is not just dates and stories. That these people walked the earth struggling along.
Edge's writing definitely brings them back to life.
Next book? Trust me I'll be there ready for it!

[Denisa Šejdová · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 ⭐️
This one is veeery tough to rate. You can get though it very fast and it’s written very easily, so even if you know nothing about human anatomy and physiology, you understand everything (I skimmed through most of the passages that were explaining these topics).

I personally have a feeling I didn’t learn much about the famous organs of the famous historical figures from the title. I knew most of the things mentioned and the presented info was very shallow. The author was changing subjects quickly, one time it was this and a paragraph later it was that.

I couldn’t wait for chapters about Marie Curie, HeLa cells and Freddie Mercury, but they were very disappointing. They mostly contained information about who these people were, how many Noble Prizes they won, what cell cultures are and how HIV works. Sorry, but this is nothing new to me and I could use Wikipedia to look it up.

I’m just gonna put a small quote here, that melted my heart, so that I don’t finish the review on a negative note.

“Marie Curie is a role model.”

[Nicola · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with Mortal Monarchs, Vital Organs is history with a twist. The facts you didn’t think you wanted to know. The book as a whole was well written and researched, with decent-length chapters and a splattering of humour throughout. There was a variety of famous figures discussed from all through history including royals, artists, scientists and musicians. As with Mortal Monarchs, I also wish this book had some references on the pages or within the chapters instead of a select bibliography at the end. My main issue with this book was that with many of the chapters, while the chapter title focused on a specific person, the contents of the chapter itself mentioned other people alongside the specified figure. Perhaps it would have made more sense in this case to have each chapter titled simply the specific body part, where it then would have flowed better when mentioning more than one person throughout. Despite this, it was enjoyable and interesting. I am definitely hoping the contents of this book help me out with a pub quiz one day.

[Summor · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a student nurse, this book not only piques my interest in two things Im interested in: history and the human body - but it’s FUN and keeps you turning the page when you think it can’t get anymore ridiculous. Napoleons penis being stolen posthumously, Marie Curie’s radiation sickness, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s withered arm.

Think of a medical horrible histories; grotesque, disgusting, incredibly informative and most of all entertainment to its highest degree. This is exactly the history that would keep pupils intrigued when it comes to the subject which sadly, so often children and young adults find boring. Suzie, a doctor, also breaks down various bodily functions, how they work, how they’re NOT supposed to work, medical issues and much more which also helps the average reader gain a much better understanding of some afflictions of which history icons have suffered; some even benefitting modern medicine today.

[Tuuli Hypén · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a brief and fairly anecdotal, but enjoyable reading experience featuring enough cases of not so well known vital organs to keep me interested.

No doubt you already know about Einstein's brain and Van Gogh's ear, but did you know that the Illegitimate son of Henry II, William Longespée died of arsenic poisoning - as did the rat that ate his brain and was found mummified inside his skull? I didn't, and I immediately looked up for more information since the book does not go into great lenghts or detail. The individual snippets of weird historical cases were pretty cool nonetheless, some of them thought provoking as well.

All in all, reading this was like listening to an excited, funny and smart friend who loves to tell you unhinged stories about gruesome quarterings or what the lack of oxygen in high altitudes does to a human body and what it's like to perish in the Death Zone.

[Ali Newboult · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vital Organs is such a quirky idea for a book - telling the stories of famous body parts through history - and some of the anecdotes really did make me laugh or squirm. Suzie Edge has a fun, conversational style that makes the weirdness easy to digest, and I learned plenty of odd little facts I’ll probably be bringing up in conversation for years.

But I have to be honest: after a while, the novelty wore thin. With over 40 case studies, the book starts to feel a bit repetitive - each bizarre tidbit is interesting, but together, it began to blur into one long procession of oddities. I also found myself wanting more depth - some of these stories are so rich, and I’d have loved to delve deeper in a few of them. Still, it’s an entertaining, well-researched read - perfect for fans of the gory, the quirky, and the oddly educational.

[Jess Botha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been following Dr Suzie Edge on TikTok for a while now, and her mixture of history and medicine is right up my alley, so when I found out she has written two books I was super excited. This one was on sale on Audible, so I listened to it, and it's become one of my favourite books of the year so far.
Dr Edge speaks intelligently about these stories, mixed with dashes of humour that make the book funny, whilst also being incredibly informative and thought-provoking. The themes of consent and respecting the wishes of the deceased also add an important layer to this book.
My only criticism is that I wished it had been twice as long!
Please write more books, Dr Edge, I will consume everything you publish!

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vital Organs is a book about the important body parts and organs throughout history and what they tell us about the people who had them.
I listened to the audiobook of this while on a trip and I really liked it! I thought this was a really interesting look at not only people throughout history but the body parts throughout history that defined them. This book is part history and part medical history as well. I thought the way Suzie Edge approached this showed how much research she put into it and her passion not only for history but the medical field as well.
I would say if the premise of this interest you, definitely pick it up. Just don't be eating while you're reading it.