George and Charlotte Blonsky, who were a
married couple living in the Bronx in New York City,
invented something.
They got a patent in 1965,
for what they call,
"a device to assist women in giving birth."
This device consists of a large, round table
and some machinery.
When the women is ready to deliver her child,
she lies on her back,
she is strapped down to the table,
and the table is rotated at high speed.
The child comes flying out
through centrifugal force.
If you look at their patent carefully,
especially if you have any engineering background
or talent,
You may decide that you see
one or two points where the design is not
perfectly adequate.
Doctor Ivan Schwab in California
is one of the people, one of the main people
who helped answer the question,
"Why don't woodpeckers get headaches?"
And it turns out the answer to that
is because their brains
are packaged inside their skulls
in a way different from the way
our brains, we being human beings,
true, have our brains packaged.
They, the woodpeckers, typically
will peck, they will bang their head
on a piece of wood thousands of times
everyday.
Everyday.
And as far as anyone knows,
that doesn't bother them in the slightest.
How does this happen?
Their brain does not slosh around like ours does.
Their brain is packed in very tightly,
at least for blows coming right from the front.
Not too many people paid attention
to this research until the last few years
when, in this country especially,
people are becoming curious about
what happens to the brains of football players
who bang their heads repeatedly?
And the woodpecker maybe relates to that.
There was a paper published
in the medical journal The Lancet
in England a few years ago called
" A man who proceed his finger smelled putrid for 5 years."
Dr. Caroline Mills and her team
received this patient and didn't really know