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Patients who cannot swallow may receive nutrition via a parenteral route—usually, a catheter is inserted through the chest into a large vein going into the heart.
Certain rare plants containing cyanide include apricot pits and a type of potato called cassava. Fortunately, only chronic or massive ingestion of any of these plants can lead to serious poisoning.
In 1835 it was discovered that a disease of silkworms known as muscardine could be transferred from one silkworm to another, and was caused by a fungus.
Earwax has antimicrobial properties that reduce the viability of bacteria and fungus in the human ear.
Cancer has been around as long as humankind, but only in the second half of the twentieth century did the number of cancer cases explode.

