In the nave of Salisbury Cathedral is a 13th-century stone effigy, worn and faded. This is the tomb of William Longespée, an illegitimate son of King Henry II. Despite being one of the most powerful nobles of his day, Longespée met an unexpected, sudden end in 1226. Some suspected he was poisoned. For centuries, the cause of death remained a mystery. Yet when the tomb was reopened in 1791, inside Longespée’s skull there was discovered a mummified rat. It emerged the rat (after feasting on Longespée’s brain) had died from arsenic poisoning – the same fate, it seemed, which had befallen his lunch, all those centuries before. It is just one of many thrilling tales dissected by Suzie Edge in Vital Organs, in which we are invited to join her at the operating table and forensically examine the body, tendon by grisly tendon. With empirical logic, we work top to bottom, each chapter dedicated to a famous limb, organ or appendage of the past.…