The ear is an inverted fetus that maps to our entire body

Originally published at: The ear is an inverted fetus that maps to our entire body | Boing Boing

5 Likes

Laurie Anderson has got you covered…

You know, I’ve always thought that one of the most serious defects of the human body was that you couldn’t close your ears
You can’t point them anywhere or close them, they just sort of hang there on the sides of your head
But an acupuncturist explained to me that the pressure points in the ears are very important, because the whole body is represented right there in the ear
"The ears, "he said, “are vestigial fetuses, little versions of yourself, one male and one female.” And he showed me: “here’s the lobe, that’s the miniature upside down head; and this curve here is the spine, and right here are the little genitals-”
And that was when I went back to wearing hats

26 Likes

As much as one can be a “pioneer” of bullshit, I guess.

The term “pioneer” generally suggests someone who had a hand in inventing, discovering, or promoting something that went on to be successful and which has benefited us all.

This is made up nonsense that deserves zero ink.

20 Likes

The French are also really into homeopathy.

7 Likes

So what about folks without free-hanging detached earlobes? Are those headless fetuses?

13 Likes

You’re not you - you’re at least 3 people. And possibly Jonas Venture, Jr.

One of these days they’re going to pop off and go live on their own.

14 Likes

image
Oh, so that’s why my ear looks like this.

9 Likes

Should be “1908” , not “1980” .

4 Likes

Breaking news: SCOTUS considers censoring the collected works of van Gogh.

6 Likes

They had them surgically removed as part of their world domination scheme?

2 Likes

Pretty impressive for a 16 year old. And that he was able to write and release detailed theories years before his birth.

3 Likes

The scheme of alternative medicine that he devised based on this resemblance

Ah yes, the “things that look like other things” school of medicine.

8 Likes

Paul Noger 1908 typo

Given his approach to medicine, I’m not so sure it’s a typo.

4 Likes

Soon on Boing Boing : « Water has memory and can cure everything ». /s

Come on Boing Boing. You can do better than writing about silly pseudoscience…

7 Likes

Some French doctor once suggested that he ear is an inverted fetus that maps to our entire body

FTFY

4 Likes

The eyes and the soles of the feet also have the same property of representing the entire body. Depending on which flavor of alternative medicine you subscribe to, that is.

5 Likes

“Do I want to read about this weird theory that the ear is a fetus? Sure, I’ll bite.” - Mike Tyson

8 Likes

“Cephalic extremity” is a term that mostly brings up descriptions of worms. I think there might be a simpler name for it in humans…I guess maybe it doesn’t sound sciencey enough.

It’s a really popular school. For herbs in the European tradition there was at least some theological justification in the doctrine of signatures, as incorrect as that proves. I’ve wondered if there’s any similar excuse in other traditions – Chinese medicine has been big on the same – or it just really seems like how things should work for some reason.

3 Likes

That’s a very fraught question for China, because a lot of what is currently marketed as “traditional Chinese medicine” was made up from whole cloth relatively recently. The canonical example is acupuncture. While somewhat derived from a genuinely ancient practice of bloodletting, the ”therapy” we know was created in 1949 to promote Chinese culture abroad and provide bread & circuses to poor people as part of Mao’s “barefoot doctor” program. Hardly “ancient” or “traditional”.

That’s not to say the barefoot doctor program didn’t do any good, but it carried a lot of pseudoscience with it which was also pushed out into the world to promote Chinese culture.

5 Likes