Assault and battery on the human anatomy

Because I read the Alt-Med websites so you don't have to, I now know all about Pishinger's Space:

...the extracellular space that contains the fluids that bath and feed each and every cell while carrying away the waste from those same cells. There is no mention of this organ in American physiology text books.

Here are some other things that are not mentioned in American physiology textbooks:

1. The Luminiferous Æther.
2. Gormley's Evanescent Ileum.
3. Epizoötic Sniggers.

On the other hand, medical textbooks do mention the Os Innominatum, which would be a good name for a Death Metal band.

Pishinger's Space is connected in some way to the Schade Organ.¹ Whatever you might think, the Schade Organ -- equally ignored by physiology textbooks -- is not:

1. A basal ganglion close to the amygdala, responsible for the emotion of schadenfreude; OR
2. A refinement of the synaesthetic clavier à lumières, invented by Scriabin's student Rudolf Schade, containing a wider range of purple hues and fewer reds than the original version (as featured in Os Innominatum concerts).

The correct answer is of course
3. An interstitial network of "colloidal connective tissue":

This organ connects and holds everything in our bodies in place. This organ is composed of ligaments, tendons, sinew, and the finer fibers that become the scaffolding that holds every single cell in our bodies in place.

or to put it in more familiar terms -- "A completely non-existent part of the human body, accepted as a fact by the Acidosis school of health bullshit". Commenting at Orac's blog, 'Nescio' suggests that some Alt-Med nimrod came across Heinrich Schade's 1927 theories about a colloidal substance in interstitial connective tissue, and misread it as meaning that the tissue was called Schade.²

Human anatomy: How it works

There is a back-story here. This is all part of the wonderful Intertube efflorescence of creativity and unfettered communication. The alt-med people have looked out at the vast panorama of information newly available to them, and gone scurrying in fear back to a strange world-view that mixes magical thinking and Medieval humoral physiology in roughly equal proportions. Apparently any form of ailment or organic failure is the fault of too much black bile acidic blood conditions.

The decrease in the alkaline reserves in the body occurs because of hyper-proteinization, (eating steak!) or too much protein, and hyper-carbonization, or too much sugar. This is why 80 to 90 year old folks are all shrunk up and look like prunes. They have very little or no alkaline reserves in their alkalophile glands.

OK. Fortunately Dr. Young -- founder of the New Biology of the 21^st century -- can test the Oxidative Reduction potential of your blood (using an ORP meter) and provide you with Alkalising Health Supplements if your bodily essences turn out to be acidic.

This is all very strange. I thought it was obvious to everyone that all diseases really arise from an imbalance of phlogiston and calor within the body, and can be cured by a high-calor diet featuring (for instance) coffee and chilli and black pudding and beer. This is all explained in my book about the Hanseatic Diet. Freshly translated from German.

¹ I ignore the details of the connection so you don't have to.

² It is an established fact that the Alt-Med crowd have a preference bordering on veneration for citing source bullshit written in German, on account of the precedents set by homeopathy and Rudolf Steiner.³ The corollary is less known: given something that is not bullshit, but is written in German and therefore unable to defend itself, they will wring all the sense out of it and turn it into bullshit anyway.

³ You know who else expressed mystical, single-cause theories of disease and impurity in German?