THE BODY PART YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU HAD

Medical science has been predicted on the fact that we humans have 78 organs. For more than a century, medical textbooks have verified that fact. But that has just changed. Researchers at the University of Limerick have identified a 79th organ, the mesentery, a sheet of connected tissues connecting the intestines to the abdominal wall. It turns out that it is the mesentery that keeps our intestines from flopping around in the belly. We don’t yet know what else it does but this newest organ may lead to important work in the study of Crohn’s disease and other diseases of the gut region.