The Book I'm Still Reading: In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920 - 1954.

I have great love for Isaac Asimov. So great that I've read dozens of his books over the course of my life, starting in Junior High School and continuing on until today. In fact, for the past three years or so, I've read a bit of an Asimov book or a book very closely related to Asimov (e.g. The Second Foundation Series by Benford, Bear, & Brin) every day. And perhaps even more evidence of the aforementioned love: I've been reading the first volume of his autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, for the past half a year or so. (Literally a few pages per day. I'm not fast, but I'm not that slow.)

Today I'm about 100 pages from the end of this 732 page behemoth, and one of Asimov's anecdotes stopped me. He talks about his second kidney stone...which was the first that he actually knew was a kidney stone...and after receiving treatment for pain (a shot of morphine), he says, "While I was sedated, the kidney stone stopped doing whatever it had been doing to cause the pain." (609) * I was astounded. At this point in time, Asimov was thirty years old, had a Ph.D. in chemistry, and was an instructor of biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine. And yet he didn't know what kidney stones did that caused pain? And one could assume that he hadn't learned anymore about it almost 30 years later, as this book was published in 1979. 

Wow.

Just goes to show you that you can be really, really smart in some ways...and really, really stupid about other things. 

P.S. BTW...and JiC...think about it this way: a straw is your ureter. A pea is the kidney stone. Now imagine that that pea is wrapped in barbed wire and shove it down the straw. THAT's what causes the pain.

P.P.S. Yes, I've had about 15 of them. I don't recommend it.

* I know. But the text of the book ends on page 708.