In marriages in which the wife experiences a serious illness, Iowa State University researchers say they have found a 6 percent higher probability of divorce than in couples in which the wife remains healthy. The same phenomenon does not occur when husbands get sick.

Amelia Karraker, lead author and an assistant professor of human development, said no data explain the difference but suggested that the added stress of illness can affect marriages differently, depending upon who is sick and who the caregiver is.

"There is a difference between feeling too sick to make dinner and needing someone to actually feed you. That's something that can really change the dynamics within a marriage," Karraker said. "If your spouse is too sick to work, we know that financial strain is a major predictor of divorce in and of itself."

Karraker offered other possibilities: Men, particularly men in older generations, tend to be uncomfortable as caregivers and may prove unsatisfactory, prompting a re-evaluation of the marriage after the wife recovers. Also, as the average life span increases and people more often recover from ailments, there is greater opportunity for couples to simply decide to get divorced later in life.

Body of Knowledge

We all possess reproductive organs of the gender we did not become. For females, it's a bundle of dead tubes called the vas deferens, located near the ovaries. In males, these become sperm ducts. For males, it's an undeveloped uterus, which hangs on one side of the prostate gland. It's known as the prostatic utricle.

Get Me That, Stat!

The child demographic most likely to get head lice is 9- and 10-year-old girls, primarily because they are also likelier to do group hugs, according to Albert Marrin in "Little Monsters: The Creatures That Live on Us and in Us."

Number Cruncher

A single Baja fish taco from Long John Silver's contains 534 calories, 297 from fat. It has 33 grams of total fat, or 51 percent of the recommended total fat intake for a 2,000-calorie daily diet, according to the Calorie Count database.

It also contains 44 milligrams of cholesterol (15 percent), 1,384 milligrams of sodium (58 percent), 42 grams of total carbohydrates (14 percent), 1 gram of sugar, 3 grams of dietary fiber (12 percent) and 16 grams of protein.

Stories for the Waiting Room

When Dr. Evan Kane needed an appendectomy in 1921, he didn't go far to find a physician. Kane is reportedly the first U.S. surgeon to perform an appendectomy on himself, which he successfully did under local anesthetic, using mirrors rigged to see the operating site. Two years earlier, Kane had amputated one of his own fingers after it became infected. A decade after the appendectomy, he would repair his own inguinal hernia, again under local anesthetic.

Kane was proud of his work. In fact, he signed his patients, tattooing the letter K in Morse code (__.__) near their surgical incisions using India ink. He died a few months after his hernia self-operation of pneumonia at age 70.

Phobia of the Week

Coprastasophobia: fear of constipation.

Never Say Diet

The speed-eating record for pepperoni and cheese pizza is 2.25 pounds (252 slices) in six minutes, held by Patrick Bertoletti. Warning: Having just attained this record, Bertoletti was in no mood for humble pie — unless it came with anchovies.

Observation

"Health food may be good for the conscience, but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better." — actor Robert Redford

Medical History

This week in 1953, Jonas Salk announced a new vaccine to immunize people against polio.

Curtain Calls

Garry Hoy was a 38-year-old Canadian lawyer who liked to impress visitors with the durability of the glass windows in his 24th-floor offices by throwing himself against them. In the past, he had harmlessly bounced off. On July 9, 1993, he pulled the stunt again. The glass window did not shatter. Rather, the entire sheet popped out, and Hoy fell more than 300 feet.

Official cause of death: accidental autodefenestration, the act of jumping, propelling oneself or otherwise falling out of a window.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.