Regeneration

I'm always intrigued by the ability of many plants to regrow after trauma and rebuild themselves from stumps and scraps left after trampling, burning or crushing.

Here's an example: I had a superannuated red cabbage that had started to rot. I removed the outer layers and cut the remaining core in half to see if it was any good. Then I left it by the sink and next time I looked at it I saw that innermost segment had started to rise up. Over subsequent days the leaves have continued to grow and these miniature cabbages have emerged from the carcase of the original one.

Lizards can regrow stumpy tails but the ability of mammalian cells to regenerate is very limited. The liver is one of the few organs to do so, but nerve cells can also regenerate to varying degrees.

In 1903 neurologists WHR (William) Rivers and Henry Head conducted an experiment to test the ability of human nerve cells to regenerate. Head offered himself as a guinea pig, allowing the nerves in one arm to be completely severed, and Rivers charted the consequent loss and the gradual resumption of sensation through regular testing of his colleague's progress over the next 5 years. It was a groundbreaking piece of research.

Pat Barker's acclaimed novel Regeneration, published 1991, used this experiment as a metaphor for Rivers' later pioneering psychological treatment of 'shellshocked' 1st world war soldiers at Craiglockart asylum in Scotland. His humane treatment, influenced by early psychoanalytic methods, was in contrast to the more insensitive approaches then employed on those suffering psychological damage. One of his patients was the poet Siegfried Sassoon who was incarcerated after making a public statement abjuring the conduct of the war: the relationship between him and Rivers forms the central focus of the novel. Psychotherapy was once known as the talking cure.
The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--

[On another note, my son Huw has posted his [url=http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2229226]first blip[/url] - do have a look at it.]