She acknowledges that the appendix has a bad rap as a useless organ that can cause you pain and require emergency surgery. And all these decades later, Smith has made a mark in the field by studying the very organ that threw off her family's vacation plans in 1992. Smith grew up to be a professor of anatomy at Midwestern University and editor-in-chief of a journal called The Anatomical Record. 'It inspired me to wonder: Why do we have this weird little organ in the first place? What does it do? Why does it get inflamed?' And after the surgery, she found herself intrigued by the part of her body she had so suddenly lost. Smith still has a small scar from the appendectomy.
