
From the Vault: Fingernails, Part 1
Stuff To Blow Your Mind
00:00
The Growth of the Left Thumb Nail
The average daily growth of the left thumb nail, for instance, has varied from zero point one, 23 millimeters a day during the first part of the study, when i was 32 years of age. It is a very long record of the growth of human deciduous tissue. Its duration has little precedent in clinical medicine or human natural history. Still, the nail provides a slowly moving caroton chimograph that measures age on the inexorable obsissa of time. As the body grows older, it becomes less efficient at producing new cellsa. The finger nail growth just slows and slows. And he's measuring it in such minute detail that he can see it happen month by month, as
Play episode from 35:00
Transcript


