They can tell you things that you didn’t consciously know.
Kidneys are quiet, lungs puff away unobtrusively, all other organs do their jobs under the surface. But human bellies can’t be ignored: growling, gurgling, grumbling without warning, bringing news of digestion and defecation.
It traces the gastric saga since ancient Greece but it is a cultural history. Metaphor, simile and stories abound, because the stomach has always testified to the connection between mind and body. The gut has figured in debates over subjectivity, spirituality, even nationhood and identity.
Stomach troubles were connected to fear and anxiety. The stomach was a drafty corridor that meditates between the external world and the internal one.
The gut’s relationships with the brain and the microbiome are being studied seriously now. Vagus nerve controls inflammation and aging. Enteric nervous system can operate independently of the brain. It is not a subdivision of the brain, but an independent kingdom in the viscera that can process info and send eloquent signals. A stomach flip, a quiver of the intestine can tell you things you didn’t consciously know.
The idea that intelligence is embodied, disposed, and multiplied is at odds with the mind-body dualism of Western thought. Thinkers following Descartes insisted that the soul resided in the brain, and only human had souls. Those who protested violence against animals were, unsurprisingly, feminists, who fought the idea that somebodies were worth more than others.
The pre-modern world, through was intrigued by all the themes that preoccupy us today, relationship between food and mood, ideal diet, and how the stomach speaks to the soul. Understandings of the stomach have tracked social change – in the early 20th century, the body was compared to a factory, oesophagus as a gleaming pipe, thyroid gland as industrial silo, heart as engine room, and so on. The digestive system was likened to cities, and chemical labs.
For many influential thinkers, the stomach was not just physical, but also metaphysical, chief seat of the vital force — which led to theological tensions about the God-given spark of life. The Romantics thought that poor digestion was a sign of a troubled artist or crabbed scholar. Meanwhile, the rhythms of the stomach were also created by society; lunch was a Victorian innovation, an essential break in the working day created by industrialization.
Over the last few decades, there has been an increase in gut-related disorders like Crohn’s disease, digestive cancers make up 30% of all cancer-related deaths, IBS afflicts a huge part of the population. Panics around processed foods and the right diet are running high. There is nothing novel about current anxieties around what we eat, and how we evacuate it.
