For more than a century, the human appendix has been written off as a biological relic, a shrunken leftover from plant-eating ancestors that serves no real purpose. That view is now outdated. A ...

Most people know only two things about the appendix: You don’t need it – and if it bursts, you need surgery fast. That basic story traces back at least to Charles Darwin, the English naturalist who ...

For years, the appendix carried a reputation as the body’s most pointless organ. Doctors often removed it without hesitation, and textbooks labeled it a vestigial structure—something our ancestors ...