The human body is an amazing machine. Mine is, anyway. For example, I regularly feed my body truly absurd foods, such as Cheez Doodles, and somehow it turns them into useful bodily parts, such as glands. At least I assume it turns them into useful bodily parts; otherwise, there must be a huge wad of Cheez Doodles hidden away in my body somewhere, and eventually it will have to be removed in a major and fairly disgusting operation.

I learned about the human body in high school biology class, which covered everything except sex. Sex was covered in health class, which mainly involved how many different kinds of venereal disease there are (fourteen million); how high school students get venereal disease (merely by holding hands firmly); and whether it is a good idea for high school students to get venereal disease (no). These days, of course, high school students learn about the more positive aspects of sex, which is why so many of them have vacant smiles.

In biology, we learned about all the different systems of the body, mainly so we could find out how many things could go wrong with them. My biology teacher would describe, in loving detail, the many diseases we could get, and we students would imagine we were getting them. I went home with a new disease every night.

I was particularly susceptible to parasitic worms. The teacher was always telling us about these little worms that were trying to get into our bodies, often disguised as pieces of pork, so they could be parasites. We spent several classes on tapeworms, which get into your intestines. When I was writing this column, I decided to brush up on tapeworms (we should all brush up on tapeworms from time to time), so I looked them up in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which says:

“Tapeworms ... occur worldwide and range in size from about one millimeter (0.04 inch) to more than 15 meters (50 feet) ...”

Think of that. Assuming you are a person of average height, at this very moment you could contain a worm nearly ten times as long as you are. If you suspect that you do contain a fifty-foot tapeworm, I advise you to feed it raw pork or whatever else it wants. Do not try to get it out, or anger it in any way; we have enough trouble in the world without huge, angry parasitic worms thrashing about.

If anything besides tapeworms goes wrong with your body, you should get a large quantity of money and go to a doctor. Everybody is always picking on doctors just because they charge high fees and rarely cure anything, but this is unfair. I mean, look at it from the doctors’ point of view: they are healthy, intelligent people who spend years in medical schools, dealing with lots of other healthy, intelligent people; then they have to go out and deal with members of the public, most of whom are sick and have no medical training. As far as doctors are concerned, the worst part about practicing medicine is having to deal with sick, untrained people all the time. Some doctors solve this problem by becoming surgeons, who wear masks and deal only with patients who are unconscious and strapped down. Others become specialists, who issue opinions from motor yachts and never see patients at all.

But most doctors are stuck in offices, and eventually they have to see actual conscious patients. What is worse, these patients generally insist on trying to explain their medical problems. Doctors hate this. I mean, they didn’t spend all those hours learning such things as where the pyloric valve is located just so they could listen to some idiot patient talk about medicine. So most doctors follow this rule: The patient is always wrong. This is why most doctor-patient conversations go like this:

PATIENT: I broke my leg.

DOCTOR: What makes you say that?

PATIENT: A tree fell on me, and my leg went “snap.” Look, a jagged piece of bone is sticking out of my thigh.

DOCTOR: The symptom you describe could well be caused by a dysfunction of the endocrinological system.

PATIENT: But my leg ...

DOCTOR: I’m going to schedule you for a series of tests at the Mayo Clinic next month, and in the meanwhile, I’ll consult with several specialists by marine radio. I suggest you avoid fatty foods.

So if you know what’s wrong with you, your best bet is to tell your doctor you think something else is wrong with you. That way you stand some chance of actually getting treated.

I understand “M*A*S*H” is going off the air, which means I will have to get a new doctor. For the past few years, I have been telling my life-insurance agent that my doctor is Alan Alda. My agent needs to know who my doctor is so he can increase my life-insurance coverage, which he does roughly every couple of months. He’ll call me up and say, “Dave, I’ve been reviewing your files, and I really think we need to increase your coverage, now that you have a child.” And I’ll say, “But, Jeff, we had the child two years ago, and we have used that excuse to increase my coverage four times since then.” And he’ll say, “Oh yeah, right. But I still think we ought to increase your coverage, because, ummmm, the cost of living has been going up.” And I’ll say, “It sure has, Jeff, especially the cost of my life-insurance premiums.” And he’ll say, “That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about, Dave. Think how difficult it would be for your wife to pay your life-insurance premiums if God forbid you were dead.”

This goes on for a half hour or so, until finally I agree to increase my coverage because otherwise I won’t be able to get off the phone and earn enough money to pay my premiums. Then Jeff says, “All I need, Dave, is the name of your doctor.” I don’t know why life-insurance companies always want the name of your doctor. Maybe they use it to check your credit rating. Or maybe they have a master list of really incompetent doctors, doctors whose patients come in with minor ear infections and wind up getting open-heart surgery, and if you have one of these doctors your premiums are adjusted upward. All I know is that Jeff won’t get off the phone until I name a doctor.

I used to give him the name of the doctor who gave me my physical examinations for my life-insurance application. He was a terrific doctor, because he specialized in insurance examinations, which means he was not the least bit interested in the internal workings of my body. All he was interested in was filling out the insurance application, which is a long list of questions, sort of like the college-entrance examinations, except that the correct answer is always no. If you answer yes, you run the risk that you won’t be allowed to pay the premiums, so the doctor reads the questions very quickly and checks “no” before you get a chance to answer:

DOCTOR: Have you or any member of your family or anybody you played with as a child ever had any funny tingling sensations?

YOU: Well, I ...

DOCTOR (checking “no”): Have you ever sat bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night with a sharp pain in your abdomen and thought it might be appendicitis but couldn’t remember whether your appendix is on the right or the left side so you woke up your spouse and he or she was somewhat irritable?

YOU: Well, once ...

DOCTOR (checking “no”): What about endotoxic infections? Salmonella typhosa? Acne? Clostridium botulinum? Semicolons? Ricketts? Tired blood? What is the capital of Idaho?

YOU: Would you mind repeating ...

DOCTOR (checking “no”): Okay. Now cough.

I liked this approach, because I never had to spend more than ten minutes with the insurance doctor, and he never tried to inject any foreign substances into my body. So I always said he was my doctor, until he retired, which is when I switched to Alan Alda.

I picked Alan Alda because he is a peck of fun. This is because he is in the Korean War, which, as you know if you watch “M*A*S*H,” is a zany, wacky, fun war, so much fun that it has been going for ten years now. I always figured that if I got sick, I could be flown directly to Korea, where Alan Alda would heal me within a half hour and introduce me to one of the several dozen attractive nurses who work in the M*A*S*H unit, and we could all go off and drink martinis and talk about how awful war is and then make lots of hilarious remarks, except for the nurses, who never say anything because their job is to mop Alan Alda’s brow.