A Post In Which I Write About Poop

You know, maybe it's because it's the beginning of the year, but I was completely stumped as to a subject to write about this week. There just isn't much cool or interesting science news floating around right now, since New Horizons is taking a break from beaming back new information. But you know what? For my actual job, occasionally I write things, and I'm kind of proud of what I wrote this week for our site's "Livin' on the MDedge" feature (The name of the feature was my idea too). So you can read that this week.

What’s Latin for ‘poop’?

The study of the human microbiota has become incredibly important in recent years, but there’s no getting away from the fact that it entails experimenting on poop. Remarkably, no one’s come up with a proper technical name for this unsavory activity. However, thanks to a collaboration between a gastroenterologist and a classics professor at the University of North Carolina, that deficiency is no more. You’ve met the in vivo and in vitro study. Now, please welcome the “in vimo” study!

Why in vimo? The term fecal or “in feco” might seem obvious. But the Latin root word never referred to poop, and if there’s one thing scientists can’t have, it’s improper Latin usage. The Romans, it turns out, had lots of words for poop. The root word of laetamen referred to fertility, richness, and happiness – a tempting prospect – but was mostly used to refer to farm animal dung. Merda mostly referred to smell or stench, and stercus shared the same root word as scatology, which refers to obscene literature. Fimus, which specifically refers to manure, was thus the most precise, and it was used by literary giants such as Livy, Virgil, and Tacitus. A clear winner, and the in vimo study flushed the rest of the competition away.

And just in case you think these researchers are no fun, the name they chose for the active enzymes collected from their in vimo samples? Poopernatants. Yes, even doctors enjoy a good poop joke.

You can see the full feature (my dad is also a contributor, he wrote the "Resistance is fecal" item) here.