the.com/spleen
the organ you can live without, but really shouldn't dump your blood-storage janitor
means A small organ tucked under your left ribs that filters old blood cells and helps your immune system, though historically it was blamed for moods like anger and melancholy.
from From Greek 'splēn,' the organ itself, traveling through Latin 'splen' into Old French and then English. The ancient Greeks pinned all sorts of black moods on it — in the old humoral theory it was thought to produce black bile, the source of melancholy and bad temper. That belief left a strange linguistic fossil: even today 'to vent your spleen' means to unleash irritation, and centuries ago an excess of fashionable bad temper was simply called 'the spleen.'
- blood bank
- Stores a reserve of blood and platelets for emergencies
- red recycler
- Destroys old red blood cells, recycling their iron
- can rupture
- Hard hits can burst it, causing internal bleeding
- old emotions
- Once blamed for bad temper and melancholy
- divers' edge
- It contracts to release extra oxygen-rich blood
splenic infarction — tissue death from blocked blood supply, common complication of atrial fibrillation and sickle cell disease