Ανατομίες: Το ανθρώπινο σώμα, τα μέρη του και οι ιστορίες που διηγούνται

by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Έμιλυ Κρητικού (translator)

Το ανθρώπινο σώμα είναι το πιο πλούσιο και συναρπαστικό, πολυσυζητη μένο και ταυτόχρονα απαγορευμένο, μοναδικό και συνάμα καθολικό γεγονός της ζωής μας. Αποτελεί αντικείμενο επιστημονικής μελέτης, έμπνευσης για την τέχνη, αλλά και πηγή ορισμένων από τις πιο γνωστές ιστορίες. Στις "Ανατομίες" ο καταξιωμένος συγγραφέας Hugh Aldersey-Williams μας δίνει ένα διασκεδαστικό μείγμα επιστήμης, ιστορίας και τέχνης καθώς συζητά για το θέμα των ανατομιών.

Σε μια συναρπαστική αφήγηση που κυμαίνεται από την αρχαία τέχνη της γλυπτικής μέχρι τη σύγχρονη πλαστική χειρουργική, ο Aldersey-Williams διερευνά τα μυστήρια του σώματος που τελικά μας κάνουν ανθρώπους. Γιατί μερικοί άνθρωποι είναι αριστερόχειρες και άλλοι έχουν γαλάζια μάτια; Γιατί σε αρκετούς πολιτισμούς η καρδιά θεωρείται η έδρα της ψυχής και των συναισθημάτων μας ενώ σε άλλους το ήπαρ;

Στο βιβλίο του ο Aldersey-Williams παρακολουθεί την ανατομία του ανθρώπινου σώματος, επισκέπτεται το γραφείο του γιατρού αλλά και το νεκροτομείο για να συλλέξει τις απαιτούμενες πληροφορίες. Αλλά οι "Ανατομίες" δεν αντλούν το υλικό τους μόνο από την ιατρική επιστήμη. Βασίζονται επίσης στις εργασίες των φιλοσόφων, συγγραφέων και καλλιτεχνών που μίλησαν για το ανθρώπινο σώμα. Ο Aldersey-Williams ερευνά μια πλούσια πολιτιστική κληρονομιά, από τον Σαίξπηρ στο Frankenstein και από τον Ρέμπραντ μέχρι το 2001: Η Οδύσσεια του διαστήματος. Αυτή η διαδρομή αποκαλύπτει πως οι στάσεις μας απέναντι στο ανθρώπινο σώμα είναι τόσο διαφορετικές όσο και η ίδια η ανθρώπινη ιστορία.

Από το πλευρό του Αδάμ στο αυτί του Βαν Γκογκ και στον εγκέφαλο του Αϊνστάιν, οι "Ανατομίες" είναι ένας θησαυρός γεμάτος γεγονότα και ιστορίες. Η ιστορία που διηγείται ο Aldersey-Williams επιβεβαιώνει αυτό που ο Αριστοτέλης έγραψε πριν από περίπου δύο χιλιετίες: "Το ανθρώπινο σώμα είναι κάτι περισσότερο από το άθροισμα των μερών του."

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Medical, Medicine, Biology, Science Nature

338 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2013

About the author

I was born in London in 1959, the same year C.P. Snow gave his infamous ‘two cultures’ lecture about the apparently eternal divide in Britain between the arts and sciences. Perhaps this is where it all begins. Forced to choose one or the other at school and university, I chose the latter, gaining an MA in natural sciences from Cambridge.

By graduation, I was aware of a latent interest in the arts, particularly in architecture and design, and was seeking ways to satisfy all these urges in something resembling a career. Journalism seemed the obvious answer, and after a string of increasingly disastrous editorial positions on technical magazines, I went freelance in 1986 and was able at last to write about what really interested me in newspapers and magazines in all these fields.

Having an American mother and an English father makes me, as it says on jars of honey, ‘the produce of more than one country’, and has left me with a curiosity about matters of national identity. Living in the United States gave me the opportunity to write my first book, using my semi-detachment from the culture to identify a renaissance in contemporary American design. Its success led to a larger-scale examination of design and national cultures as well as a number other design books and a five-year stint as design critic of the New Statesman.

Now, the science was losing out. Over-compensating perhaps, I wrote an entire book about a single molecule—albeit an exceptionally novel and beautiful one, called buckminsterfullerene. Here at last science and design began to merge. My projects since then have continued to explore science, design, architecture, national identity and other themes in books and exhibitions.

I am a member of the Society of Authors and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. I live in Norfolk and London with my wife Moira, son Sam, and two Maine coon cats.

Reviews

[Meghan Moriarty · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a cool concept! What an utter disappointment!

This book was poorly written, and even more poorly researched.

I suppose I should have been warned in the introduction, page xxv, when the author said “I have tried to minimize my use of [Greek and Latin] words, many of which were baffling to me as I set out. I won’t use ‘anterior’ where ‘front’ will do, or ‘femur’ for ‘thigh bone.’” This should have been a bigger red flag than it was. Not only did Aldersey-Wiliams seem to have little background knowledge in anatomy and physiology, but he seemed to refuse to learn. “Femur” is such a normal everyday word, it hurts my heart thinking there are such scientifically illiterate people that they would consider this foreign.

For an anatomy book, you’d think Aldersey-Williams would learn a little, but alas, the class he refers to obsessively where he got to look at cadavers and then sketch them, did little to familiarize him with the parts of the body. One of my favorite instances (page 68) is where he refers to the zygomatic arch (cheekbones) in an illustration as the eye socket. If he had so much as looked at a labelled picture of a skull, it would have been obvious he was very incorrect.

His lack of knowledge in anatomy is glaringly apparent when he says “major organs may seem to have a distinct nature and yet are multiply integrated with other parts of the body. ‘Bits in between’, meanwhile, such as the diaphragm, say, which separates the organs of the chest from those in the abdomen, may be unfairly neglected because they are not seen as forming suitable discrete units.” Maybe Aldersey-Williams took a piss-poor anatomy class. Or maybe he forgot that the diaphragm is not just a divider, but perhaps the most important muscle (and often described as a discrete unit just like your other skeletal muscles) when it comes to breathing. I have not taken a single anatomy or physiology class that neglected the importance of this muscle and I surely didn’t need a class to remind me of its significance.

He also lacks in the physiology knowledge department. Or just science in general. Just read this from page 52: “In life, we tend to think the bones are heavy and the flesh is light.” Who thinks that? Why would anyone think that? It’s stupid. Why would we have heavy bones if we have to move them? It doesn’t make any sense. Birds have lightweight bones because they have to bring those bones with them when they fly and wow, it’s easier to fly when you’re not dragging along some metaphorical dead weight. And his explanation: “This is because the latter moves while the former must be moved. We think of muscle as active and bone in contrast as passive and therefore inert and resistant to our will.” What kind of backward logic is this? I cannot fathom the mental gymnastics he had to perform to reach this conclusion. Another attempt at physics on page 222: “In fact, to a good, approximation, it is the case not only that all comparably fit humans, but also all species capable of jumping, from the flea to the elephant, can jump to roughly the same absolute height of a meter or so. This is because both the energy needed to produce the jump, generated by the muscles, and the potential energy gained at the top of jump are directly proportional to the animal’s mass, ultimately making this mass, or size, an irrelevant consideration.” Huzzah there’s the conservation of energy. But this statement clearly ignores biomechanics and reminds me of my physicist father’s favorite punchline: “Consider a spherical cow.” Now perhaps if he were to back up this statement with some data and more of a proof, he might have an argument. But clearly there are species that routinely jump higher than this. Maybe I could let this slide if he were to make an argument that for each individual species, and didn’t try to compare one species to another, mass theoretically (or “in physicsland” as my professor used to say) cancelled out and didn’t correlate to height of a jump, then maybe I could let this slide.

And now for some ignorance in biology and physiology. Here’s one from page 135: “Most animals have two kidneys like us, but some have more, and even the human embryo actually develops three pairs of kidneys about a month after conception, with only the last of the three becoming functional organs.” He’s so mixed up it’s painful. While I’m not sure of any animal that has more than two kidneys (and not some other organ like the mesonephros that has a similar function but less advanced than mature human kidneys), I wouldn’t put it past that there are some that exist. The least he could have done is give an example. But the painful part about this is his confusion with the stages of development with actual mature kidneys. There are three stages of development (pronephros, mesonephros, and metanephros). Not three pairs of kidneys and while they may slightly overlap as one develops and the other goes through apoptosis, they don’t all exist simultaneously and they are definitely much less complex than a fully developed kidney.

There’s another example of inaccurate statements made on page 210 about the development of sex organs and how we are by default females, but I’m going to let it slide because that was the view held for a long time. However, there is substantial evidence now that developing both mature female and male sex organs is an active process and it is nowhere near as simple as being female by default.

While there are some fun, anecdotal stories that have to do with anatomy’s place in past cultures, I
would never repeat them to anyone. I know little about history and I fear his research into these stories is just as poor as his research on his scientific inserts.

Furthermore, a large part of his book is trying to impress people with the art class that allowed him to sketch cadavers (not shock or awe-invoking to a group of people hat are already interested in anatomy and decided to read a book with an anatomical drawing on the back cover), listing idioms that reference a body part and then explaining their meaning, and trying to come to conclusions that really just sound like a 9th graders English paper they BSed the night before. (Page 43: “Indeed, it seems doubtful whether a conspicuously fat person could be elected as a national leader today, even in countries where obesity is epidemic among the electorate.” LOL!!!! This was in the chapter “Flesh” where he ponders the importance of fat and how history has viewed fat and what the biological importance of fat for pages and yet fails to connect that fat tends to be positive when food is scarce and negative when food is plentiful because fat wow stores energy and you don’t produce fat if you don’t eat. Wow what a difficult concept).

Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if his editor even existed. Perhaps they were too busy to read this, or maybe they couldn’t understand what he was saying and chalked it up to him just being too smart and didn’t edit it. But there were so many sentences that just didn’t logically make sense. It seemed like he had two ideas going and copied the first half of one idea to the second half of another. Try this one on pages 143-144: “Menstrual blood is not a universal taboo, as the anthropologist Mary Douglas demonstrates with reference to the Walbiri people of central Australia, whose women are subject to brutal physical control by their husbands, apparently obviating the need for more nuanced rules of sex pollution.” What? How does the brutal physical control by the husbands of the Walbiri women demonstrate that menstrual blood isn’t a universal taboo. And I tried so hard to find a consistent definition of “sex pollution,” but failed. If anyone wants to enlighten me, please do. From what I gathered, pollution and purity in this sense refer to established rules. Purity meant the lines and boundaries in a society were clear. So a very patriarchal society would be more pure. Buuut, I definitely found contradicting definitions and as I said, I don’t really understand it. Aldersey-Williams doesn’t even attempt a further explanation. That’s the first, last, and only mention of Mary Douglas, the Walbiri people, and sex pollution.

Here’s another goodie (page 34): “So where is the human holotype? For that matter, who is the human holotype? Oddly, there isn’t really one. This is partly because holotypes are designated requirement for species described since 1931, and partly because there is no scientific ambiguity about membership of the human species. (Racists might disagree, but their objections arise in large part because different races can interbreed, which demonstrates our common humanity).” This totally sounds like one of those sentences that people will skim over, say “hmm… that sounds smart. I don’t really understand it, but whatever” and move on. I implore you to try and makes sense of this. What are the racists disagreeing with? I think he’s saying that racists disagree with the “there is no scientific ambiguity about membership of the human species” because they’re racists and think some races are superior to others. Sure, that makes sense I guess. But then why would their objection stem from the fact that different races can interbreed and wouldn’t demonstrating our common humanity kind of defeat the point that racists try to make? Someone please explain what he is trying to say.

Overall, this book was full of inaccurate science, poorly written sentences, and way too much about William-Aldersey and not nearly enough about cultural history. I got Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body, not Anatomies: Hugh William-Aldersey Sees a Cadaver, Has an Existential Crisis, and Discovers He’s a Little Curious About His Body (But Not Enough to Do Any Thorough Research).

I’d honestly be embarrassed of this book if I wrote it. It reads like the caffeine-fueled, heavily-procrastinated, admittedly not researched enough, all-nighter, due-tomorrow-do-tomorrow essays I wrote while in college. (I can only hope that his other books he’s more well known for such as Periodic Tales and The Most Perfect Molecule are better written and researched).

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the Guardian's cover endorsement points out, this is a cultural history rather than a science book, really. It talks about art a lot, as well as discussing cultural attitudes to various bodyparts and some references to scientific understanding of them (though, honestly, not that much; I didn't really learn anything). It missed out some cultural stuff I would consider significant -- e.g. the Egyptian disregard of the brain in embalming.

It's mostly just anecdotal; entertaining, but not very enlightening. Science book of the year it is not.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Hugh Aldersey-Williams’s Periodic Tales, and liked it, so when I returned it to the library I checked to see if they had anything else by him, and found this book.

Aldersey-Williams trained as a chemist, so his book on the elements was informed by personal experiences and professional knowledge. The only class he seems to have taken in biology was in middle school, so whatever understanding he has of this subject comes from research and interviews with experts. There is nothing wrong with writing a book using this approach, but it needs to have a tight focus or it will wander off into a series of mostly unrelated anecdotes. That is the case with this book: some of the researched biological facts are interesting and informative, but it is primarily a cultural history of the body, so the science bits are interspersed among stories from history, biography, and art, with the result that the book feels meandering.

I highlighted a number of passages that I considered interesting, which I have included below. However, having read some of the other reviews, by people with a better grasp of biology than I will ever have, now I’m not sure how much faith to put in them. Most of them are of course true, but some likely fall into the ‘yes-but’ category, where additional information is needed to put them into their proper context.

- A bone can typically resist a load of a tonne and a half per square centimetre before it breaks. The bones of a child’s arm are are easily strong enough to support the weight of a family car, for example. (p. 56)

- To a first approximation, the body is simply an assemblage of straight, rigid beams hinged in various ways at the ends to the next such beam to make up an articulated whole. (p. 57)

- A frequent cause of rib fractures is a severe coughing fit when the pressure comes from inside the ribcage. (p. 49)

- Blood entering the left chamber of the heart is warmer because, we we now know, it has been replenished with oxygen whose reaction with haemoglobin releases heat. (p. 72)

- One body part more than any other shows how the human anatomy is still not fully mapped even now. The clitoris seems to have been known, lost, found, lost again and found once more during the course of 2,000 years of medical history. (p. 80)

- Abundant hair takes the form of shagginess in men, covering large areas of skin, and sinuous length in women. When hidden, women’s hair is equated with chastity. Putting the hair up indicates eligibility for marriage. Long, flowing hair is an indication of wantonness – our guilty culture’s imaginative extrapolation from nature’s gift of hair at puberty. (p. 94)

- In circumstances where sexual selection couldn’t be less relevant, beauty still has the power to sway our judgement. One typically startling discovery is that attractive persons are more likely to be acquitted at trial. (p. 100)

- what are we to make of the fact that our body’s cells are completely renewed over a period of seven years or so, so that we are materially not the same person at all? (p. 107)

- All eyes contain a certain amount of one pigment, melanin….It is the variation in the levels of this pigment, together with the light-interference effect, that gives rise to the entire range of eye colours that we cherish. With progressively less melanin present, the eye can appear dark or light brown, hazle, green, grey or blue. (p. 170)

- researchers at the University of Copenhagen discovered a mutation of a particular gene that regulates a protein needed to produce melanin. Babies are often blue-eyed at first, even when born to brown-eyed parents, because this protein is yet to be released to the full extent. According to Hans Eiberg, who led the research, his genetic discovery suggests that all blue-eyed individuals alive today can trace their ancestry to one original Ol’ Blue Eyes, who was the first to undergo this mutation, between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. (p. 171)

- The best sight gag in the entire history of art must be the fig leaf. How large it is! And how very suggestive in its shape! How it engrosses what it purports to hide. How many other plant leaves might have done the job with less blatancy. And yet the fig leaf it assuredly is that artists have elected to use when asked to preserve the public decency. The Blble gives them their cover story: in Genesis, when Adam and Even realized their nakedness, ‘they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.’ But aprons are garments that surely provide rather more coverage that the single, strategically positioned leaf of artistic convention, with its three major lobes simultaneously screen and outlining the penis and testicles behind, and two further vestigial lobes appearing so neatly to represent curls of pubic hair. (p. 203)

- A human being radiates power at a rate of 100 watts when resting, rising to 300 watts when doing exercise, which is a power conversion unit area roughly equal to a rooftop photovoltaic solar panel, and enough that architects must take it into account when designing spaces that will be crowded with people. (p. 227)

[Chalchihut · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the top of the cover it says "The Sunday Times Science Book of the Year". Never trust the covers, especially the bestsellers or some newspapers' choice titles. I can say that this book is rather a historical and cultural book which is related to the parts of the human body. Therefore I didn't experience what I expected, nevertheless I really enjoyed the content of the book.

Could it have been a better book? Maybe. In the end, human body and how it has been seen throughout the centuries isn't an easy subject to evaluate in a fluent storytelling. Maybe the book lack many information, but I believe that it had to focus on certain things in order to keep the content in order.

Not a must read, but I recommend this book to those who are eager to learn more about their bodies through history and art.

[Book Shark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

“Anatomies" is an accessible book on how the body works and doesn’t from a cultural perspective. The book is full of historical anecdotes, biological information, and some interesting tidbits. The book is engaging but not as scientifically informative as I would have liked. Furthermore, even the anecdotes lack the panache of say a Sam Kean or a Mary Roach. This mixed-bag 321-page book is broken out into the following three main parts: 1. The Whole, 2. The Parts, and 3. The Future.

Positives:
1. An accessible book on human biology from cultural perspective.
2. An interesting topic. "This book is about our bodies, their parts, and their multiple meanings. It is also about where we draw the limits of the body, and how we are always seeking to extend those limits, never more so than right now."
3. Excellent format. The book is arranged in chapters based on significant body parts.
4. The book is full of historical anecdotes. "Leonardo was probably the first artist to cut up the human body and draw what he saw."
5. The history of the fingerprints..the man behind it.
6. The gold standard for human anatomy. Find out.
7. Interesting stories about our flesh. "Human and animal flesh are of roughly equal density, so a pound of beefsteak gives a good visual impression."
8. Even as a nonbeliever I did enjoy how the author shared biblical insights on how it relates to the human body. "Where ‘flesh and blood’ appear yoked together in the Bible it is usually in reference to burnt offerings and animal sacrifices."
9. An excellent chapter on bones. "Bones fuse because of gravity. In the effectively weightless environment underwater, the bones of whales and fish may never fuse, and so they carry on growing. Growth is so unimpeded in some cases that size is a good guide to an animal’s age."
10. Debunks some myths.
11. Gary's Anatomy is not just the title of a popular TV show...find out where the term came from.
12. Heads up..." Current medical understanding is that a severed head can remain aware and conscious until falling blood pressure and lack of oxygen causes the brain to shut down, which may indeed take quite a few seconds." The cultural impact of hair.
13. What's in a face..."One typically startling discovery is that attractive persons are more likely to be acquitted at trial."
14. A look at the brain. Functional MRIs.
15. The history of the heart. " Harvey’s discovery a little over 100 years later that the heart was a pump – a central pump, regally important in the body, but just a pump for all that – was one of the first breakthroughs to begin to persuade people that the brain was in fact more important, marking what the cultural historian Fay Bound Alberti calls the ‘scientific transition from a cardio-centric to a cranio-centric body’."
16. One of the strongest chapters is on blood. "Blood is just another tissue, after all – one of the connective tissues, so-called because it runs throughout the body rather than being associated exclusively with localized organs. But it seems the cultural barriers are greater than the medical ones."
17. So where is the "soul" located again?
18. The importance of the thumb. "Finally, there is the thumb, ‘the father of technology’, according to Raymond Tallis. It is our having an opposable thumb – meaning to say we can employ it in opposition to the other fingers – that greatly increases the capability of the hand, so that it is able to exert a wide variety of grips."
19. Interesting discussion on gender. "To this natural biological variability, we must add cultural factors. Gender refers to our social and cultural self-definition as distinct from our biological sex. Our expectation of what gender is and ought to be is shaped by culture, and one of the principal restrictions is the existence of gender in grammar."
20. Understanding our skin. "The largest organ of the human body; its colour relative to others, and our curious propensity, having declared that this matters so greatly, to ignore its real hue and settle for calling it ‘black’ or ‘white’; and above all its sheer, vulnerable, embarrassing nakedness."
21. The future of extending our bodies capabilities.

Negatives:
1. The book lacked panache. It fails to sell itself as a fascinating book.
2. Just didn't share enough fascinating scientific facts about each body part.
3. The book feels rushed. The third and final part of the book was lacking.
4. Many of the stories have been rehashed before. As an example: Einstein's brain, X-Rays,
5. Poor chapter on the brain.
6. Endnotes not linked.

In summary, I had high hopes for this book but was mildly disappointed. A fascinating topic but Aldersey-Williams did not live up to my expectations. Where are all the fascinating tidbits? The shocking scientific stories? That being said, the book is very accessible and does share some interesting historical anecdotes and biological information. A mild recommendation.

Further recommendations: "The Universe Inside You" by Briann Clegg, "The Sports Gene" by David Epstein, "Zoobiquity" by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers, "The Last Ape Standing" by Chip Walter, "Wonders of Life" by Bryan Cox, "The Universe Within" by Neil Shubin, "The Disappearing Spoon" by Sam Kean, "Physics of the Future" by Michio Kaku, and "Bonk" by Mary Roach.

[Shannon Montalbano · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll have to admit I was a tad disappointed. I thought the symbolism on every aspect of the human body was interesting, but I thought it would break down the mechanisms more. To a point, I enjoyed it, just not what I was expecting.

[Brian Clegg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author Hugh Aldersey-Williams had a real success with his chemical elements book Periodic Tales, so was faced with the inevitable challenge of what to do next. He has gone for a medical tour of the body, intending to reach into the bits we don’t normally find out about to uncover the hot research topics.

After a quick canter through the history of the way we view our bodies he breaks it down for a bit-by-bit exploration. If I’m honest, basic biology (especially human biology) is not a topic that thrills me, but there is no doubt that Aldersey-Williams manages to bring out some enjoyable, quirky and interesting subjects. Admittedly some of these are covered better elsewhere – so, for instance, his brief foray into what made Einstein’s brain special can’t match Possessing Genius - but the idea that they were already performing nose jobs over 100 years ago or the weirdness of synaesthesia certainly catch the attention.

I like plenty of historical context – and this book has it in spades – but I also like to see a balance of science content, and there it seems a little weak. In Anatomies we certainly get plenty of basic biology, medical aspects and cultural context, but we miss out on so much of the meaty science.

By no means a bad book, but not in the same league as Periodic Tales.

[Lotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable trawl through the body. Not an extensive biological book, but informative nonetheless. I spent a good fifteen minutes contorting my hand into a silly pose to confirm what I was reading at one point.
Occasionally the author seems to enjoy his cultural references and own prose a tad too much. I also suspect he's a terrible dinner party name dropper.
However, a likable read and had my reading not been rudely interrupted by the inconvenience of having to finish my dissertation, probably a quick one too. I'm definitely inclined to read his Periodic Tales book now.

[Layne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall an interesting read and not one I regret picking up; however, it seemed to lack the connective tissue usually present in well done pop-science books (Mary Roach being my favorite writer in that vein, puns intended).

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting medical humanities text. I enjoyed reading it. I am critical of the title being misleading. It is not a cultural history. It is a Western European cultural history of the human body. This is interesting enough, but it should advertise itself as that. It barely mentions, if that, beliefs, art, and other cultural phenomena of Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, ancient Egyptians, Africans, Indians, Aborigines, etc. I recognize that this book would be entirely unwieldy, but an acknowledgement of other ideas would not have gone amiss.

[Yannis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Κατακερματισμένο αλλά με τρυφερό βλέμμα προς το σώμα μας (φυλακή τής ψυχής ή σπίτι της;) και με χιούμορ πιο διακριτικό και από ένα φύλλο συκής.

[Roozbeh Daneshvar · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subtitle promises "A Cultural History of the Human Body", and I believe it was misleading. It was as if the book made a claim and could not deliver as promised. Such a promising title deserved better. I found the whole structure disorganized, with bits and pieces brought from here and there, some historical and some from art and a bit from culture, somehow forced together.

Still the book had a lot to learn from. I have selected some pieces from the book. I learned many interesting facts about our bodies from this book.

you simply produce more urine in your sleep as you get older

And in truth we have always altered ourselves in both psychological and physical ways. This is just the latest chapter in a continuing story. The idea of the body as a canvas is not new. It’s just that more people than ever are starting to paint.

After seeing several more bodies, it is clear that people vary on the inside at least as much as they do outwardly. We are not all the same beneath the skin.

A few units are based not on man’s dimensions but on his capabilities. An acre is the area that a man and his ox were supposed to be able to plough in a day

In Hindu tradition, nimesha is the length of a blink of an eye and paramaanus is the interval between blinking.

There are around thirty billion fat cells in the body. This figure does not change if you gain weight – at least at first. What happens is that each cell stores more energy-rich lipid, increasing up to fourfold in weight. If weight gain proceeds beyond a certain point, however, these cells begin to divide, and new fat cells are formed. After that, it’s harder to lose weight.

A slight young woman who weighs, let us say, fifty kilogrammes may possess a skeleton with a dry weight of no more than three or four kilogrammes.

Bones fuse because of gravity. In the effectively weightless environment underwater, the bones of whales and fish may never fuse, and so they carry on growing. Growth is so unimpeded in some cases that size is a good guide to an animal’s age. Humans, on the other hand, stop growing at a remarkably constant size.

bone is somewhat stronger in compression than it is in tension. A bone can typically resist a load of a tonne and a half per square centimetre before it breaks. The bones of a child’s arm are easily strong enough to support the weight of a family car, for example. Its tensile strength is nearly as great, comparable with that of metals such as copper and cast iron. Only in torsion is bone relatively weak, which explains why most fractures are the consequence of severe twisting forces.

Any functional structure must have parts that are in tension and parts that are able to withstand compression, otherwise it will either fly apart or crumble. The bones are principally used in compression. It is the muscles that provide the tension.

Bones develop in response to stress. Tiny cracks form when they are subjected to forces during normal exercise. These cracks send chemical messages instructing new bone tissue to form. However, bone will fail if pushed only a little way beyond its normal performance limit – to about 120 per cent, compared to 200 per cent for materials like steel.

We conceitedly believe we are taller than our ancestors because we eat so well. In fact, evidence from skeletons of Homo erectus and early Homo sapiens shows that they were taller than we are, owing to the strenuous work necessary to survive.

Blood entering the left chamber of the heart is warmer because, as we now know, it has been replenished with oxygen whose reaction with haemoglobin releases heat.

the body’s full quota of a gallon of blood passes through the heart in no more than a minute!

It is in compensation for the forced expulsion of part of the soul from the head that today we still say ‘bless you’ when somebody sneezes.

Current medical understanding is that a severed head can remain aware and conscious until falling blood pressure and lack of oxygen causes the brain to shut down, which may indeed take quite a few seconds.

We are all, as it happens, ‘hairy as an ape’. Humans have just as much hair as chimpanzees. It is only the fact that ours is finer, shorter and generally paler than the chimpanzee’s that leaves us free to call ourselves the naked ape.

attractive persons are more likely to be acquitted at trial

The kidney that remains in the body of a living donor soon grows by some 80 per cent, practically restoring full renal function.

Although Christianity arose out of Judaism, its attitude towards blood is sharply different. Because the Christian God is revealed in the bloody sacrifice of Jesus, blood is a central part of the ritual. Until the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, the Christian ceremony involving bread and wine was merely symbolic of the Last Supper. The Council decreed that the bread and wine was to be regarded as the actual body and blood of Christ, and in doing so invented a ritual, the Eucharist, that could be replicated in every church in Christendom, in which the faithful could engage in a physical communion with Christ.

By the miracle of transubstantiation, believers can share in the body of Christ without disgust, neatly sidestepping any suggestion of cannibalism.

The outer ear is composed entirely of soft tissue and cartilage. There is no supporting bone. This means that it can be deformed and reformed, cut away and replaced. It is an exemplar of arbitrary human tissue.

although the iris is named after the Greek word for rainbow, it may come as a surprise to learn that there is no distinctive colour present in the eye in any case. The colours that we perceive do not arise from different pigments, but are what is known as ‘structural colour’ – an illusion of colour produced by an effect of interference between light rays that is also found in butterfly wings and iridescent bird feathers.

We are inherently multisensory beings. We see and hear together. We use our senses of smell and taste together. Combined sense signals often amount to more than the sum of their parts, and are more memorable.

synaesthesia, an effect that has always intrigued me in which a signal in one sense also stimulates a brain response in another.

The pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras believed that man was more intelligent than the beasts because of his hands. Aristotle, about a century later, believed roughly the opposite, that our hands only became necessary with intelligence. Either way, they were in agreement that manual dexterity and intelligence are closely connected. This remains the consensus today, although which came first is still hotly disputed.

However, we remain, so far as we know, the only creature that points. Pointing is a highly ‘unnatural’ action. To point at something presupposes that we have a mental label or name for what is being pointed at, or else the action would mean nothing. This in turn requires the existence not just of language but of a shared language and, moreover, our understanding that the person for whom we are pointing has a mind similar to our own, so that they can infer exactly what it is, of the many things that may lie in front of our finger, we are pointing at. According to the physician and philosopher Raymond Tallis, this makes pointing ‘a fundamental action of world-sharing, of making a world-in-common’.

Indeed, it has been estimated that there are more possible hand gestures than there are words in the English language.

So-called ‘denary’ counting is based on the ten fingers and thumbs, and most other popular number bases, such as binary and bases four, twelve and twenty, are based on various combinations of limbs and digits. Even an octal system used by some Native American cultures begins with the hands: it counts not the peaks that our fingers make but the valleys in between them.

In a way, it is the presence of symmetry in the body at all that is more remarkable than when it breaks down. The process of embryonic development is one of progressive loss of symmetry.

At conception, it may surprise some to learn, we are all essentially female. Although the woman’s egg contributes an X chromosome and the man’s sperm either an X or a Y chromosome, these do not immediately determine the sex of the embryo. At eight weeks’ gestation, the fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus. If it has a Y chromosome, it then responds to a chemical signal that causes testes to begin to form, and the potential female reproductive system to wither. If not, it continues in its ‘default setting’ until, at thirteen weeks, the foetus gonads begin to transform into ovaries.

Gender is a superfluous development in grammar that should gradually wither from the world’s languages, say the experts, although perhaps it will not do so quickly: in long ungendered English, ships are still designated feminine

The form of movement that more greatly interests me, however, is dance. Here, extreme physical exertion must be combined with extreme restraint to produce artistic expression. It is at once a highly sophisticated and yet also strangely primal activity. If sport is our cultural legacy of the actions necessary for individual survival, then dance, it seems to me, is our inheritance from our first attempts to make connections. It contains the erotic, the religious and, in the synchrony of a war dance or of a corps de ballet, the urge to be one of the group. Dance is the bodily expression of civilization.

the physical activity of dance is distinguished from sport by the requirement to disguise the effort involved

A human being radiates power at a rate of 100 watts when resting, rising to 300 watts when doing exercise, which is a power conversion per unit area roughly equal to a rooftop photovoltaic solar panel, and enough that architects must take it into account when designing spaces that will be crowded with people.

Marcel Grossmann, a Swiss mathematician who was a student contemporary of Einstein, once confided to the physicist that he could not happily sit on a warm lavatory seat, to which Einstein blandly pointed out that the heat is ‘entirely impersonal so that to receive it in this way was not to be subject to an unwanted intimacy’.

The age at which we can expect to die has tripled during the course of human history.

[Varsha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating journey around the body!

[Hayley Ramsey]

DNF - was feeling a bit ick about this book and the tone, reading other reviews just sort of confirmed my suspicions

[Waleed · Rating 2 out of 5]

A rambling mess. Intermittently interesting as a cultural history, but the science is all over the place.

[ellis · Rating 2 out of 5]

humorous and obviously extensively researched, but lacked coherence and seemed to jump all over. material was anecdotal, which would have been fine if it had gone into just a bit more depth. historical anecdotes also were primarily european; i was hoping for comparisons across cultures.

the chapter on the sex was also painfully ill-worded for something published in 2013. the bit about bisexual people not simply liking both men and women, but liking sex more, stands out as being particularly grating.
there is also a section where he talks about the transgender experience and refers to the woman he interviews by her old name and pronouns several times. this may be how she prefers it, her case being so famous, but i do not know for sure. in any case, here's a heads up about that, for those who would be very bothered.

would have preferred a "fun facts" list to this book.

[Marion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughts while reading:
(1) Interesting voice of the book. It feels like a series of well-prepares lectures. I'm enjoying it, but I also enjoy attending lectures.
(2) Not as much of a scientific book. More anecdotal stories about organs or regions. V. diff from what I'm used to reading.
(3) I still wish this had a spark: either funnier or more detailed or more focused on either culture or science or something. For example, the chapter on the heart meandered all over the place and touched on many issues that relate to that organ. It didn't really satisfy my interest, though.

[Kerfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author considers the body and its different parts, both scientifically and culturally. He goes off on tangents of relationships (for instance speaking of tattoos when considering skin), some more interesting than others. I learned a lot, and enjoyed the journey.

[Andreas Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chiacchiere
Aldersey-Williams riesce a riempire di chiacchiere un intero libro, ed essere estremamente prolisso, per non dire sostanzialmente nulla, o veramente poco di nuovo. La struttura del libro è divisa in modo molto discutibile in questi capitoli: mappare il tutto, carne, ossa, le parti, la testa, il volto, il cervello, il cuore, il sangue, l'orecchio, l'occhio, lo stomaco, la mano, il sesso, il piede, la pelle, il futuro. In tutta questa suddivisione estremamente personale, vengono rimescolati i soliti elementi che si possono contare sulle dita di una mano, come il cervello di Einstein, Vesalio e racconti aneddotici, il dipinto di Rembrandt del 1632 che ritorna in tutto il romanzo, il cugino di Darwin, Galton, che sembra aver reso in statistica ogni aspetto della natura umana. L'anatomia di Gray viene citata in un solo capitolo. Sotto sotto, si riesce a intravedere quel conformismo dell'accademia di Cambridge. Tutto è scienza, il corpo umano è stato compreso dagli scienziati, il futuro ci riserverà il transumanesimo (sì, credeteci), e tutto si ascrive a ciò che si può misurare e capire e comprendere da quella scienza nata dalla Rivoluzione francese. In certi capitoli, mi viene il dubbio che sappia di che cosa stia parlando, per esempio quando parla del Filarete e Sforzinda (che ha una collocazione ben precisa nella storia dell'arte italiana), per il resto è un testo piacevole, anche se inutilmente prolisso nella sua carenza di informazioni veramente serie.

[Paris Salmon MD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will be building my future estate in the shape of a blood cell please and thank you!!!!! Reignited my flame for medicine, you guys I am so excited to be a doctor you have no idea. FOR MY FINAL PURCHASE AT BARNES & NOBLE I purchases a New York Times, Dog Man, and The Grey's Anatomy because of this book. Doctors are such little sneaks!! In four years when I am fighting against the Harvard baddies for a seat in med school, I will be whipping this bad boy out and quoting it straight up.

Finished this on a sunset backdrop on the Lake, sipping my green tea, getting in that Good Friday rejuvination living the absolute dream. It took me an obnoxious amount of time to actually start reading this book after buying it three millenniums ago in a galaxy far far away; because I just knew it would rock my world and it intact did just that!!! I AM BACK you guys This book was my rebirth Lazarus style!!! If baby Paris could see current Paris growing up to be the London fog aristocrat dream girl she always wanted to be, queen would be punching the air. Ready to get on the front lines in 5-10 Business years - ALSO SHOUT OUT TO GOGOL, no matter where I turn the Russian literature references follow me always #reconnectingwiththeancestors

[Katie (DoomKittieKhan) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am grateful for the subtitle of this book - that this is a cultural history of the body and not a science text. I could not help but compare this book to Adventures in Human Being by Gavin Francis. I think the two work well in tandem - or maybe I just think that because I read them almost back to back. Aldersey-Williams work focuses on our artistic and literary perceptions of the human body. Touching on Shylock's infamous demand for a 'pound of flesh', phantom emotions from organ transplants and the history of gift giving, Van Gogh's ear, the public anatomy lessons of 17th century Dutch Republic, synesthesia, the stigma associated with donating "the right" blood, under-representation of the clitoris, and ancient Egyptians disregard for the brain.

I truly loved Part I of the book which focuses on the Skin and Bones. Honestly, the pages devoted to really dissecting (pun intended) Shylock's speech about a 'pound of flesh' has totally rocked my interpretation of that scene from The Merchant of Venice.

A fun read about our need to make sense of ourselves.

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-Fiction>Human Biology

What an interesting concept and way to organize a book. This isn't just an exploration of human anatomy, it is really as the subtitle suggests: a look at how popular culture, laws, standards, attitudes, and language have been influenced by our understanding of anatomy through the ages. The chapters go by body parts and each one could almost stand alone as a discussion of how our cultures (mostly Western cultures, to be fair) have thought of and 'dealt' with different body parts--from eyes to genitals to hair.

I have read the author's Periodic Tales and enjoyed it, but I do like Anatomies better.
322 Pages (264 before notes) Pub 2013

[loonchies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serve its title well enough

Starting off interestingly. It provides new aspects and story to the parts of body we may not realize before. Instead of talking about thing chronologically or synchronically, the author just choose the point and the story that maybe somehow related to the organ, represent it, then move on to another story. Not what I expected it to be though. Sometimes I feel like the author went too far beyond the topic, but that's acceptable. Still, there a lot of interesting and fascinating information. Fun to read.

[Ryan Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body is an important review of the human body and how societies have approached various aspects of it. As a medical anthropologist myself, it is an important accompaniment to our biological/physiological understanding of the body. The latter simply isn't enough to understand how people engage with and understand their bodies without applying a cultural lens to the body. I would argue that culture is just as important as biology in shaping us and Aldersey-Williams encapsulates that in this book.

[Iñaki Tofiño · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was curious about how the author would write "a cultural history of the human body", a gigantic endeavour, possible but extremely difficult. Well, the book is not at all "a cultural history of the human body" but rather a review of some of its parts and how they have been considered in the Western world. The books is well researched, it gives curious facts about the human body, includes interviews with scientists, and it is not without interest, but, well, it does not deliver. Quickly read, probably quickly forgotten.

[It’s-not-the-critic-who-counts · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a prime example of why I don't call books I've started "DNF"s because I might someday finish reading them, this just happens to have taken me seven years to do so. I started this in 2016, having borrowed it from a friend and finally finished recently (obviously having had to start again). It was certainly interesting and I'm probably filled with facts from it that I now spout at people without being able to cite where they're from but it's meandering and slow at times too.

[Bob Beilstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh

Halfway through, the social aspects of anatomy left me bored. The only reason I slogged through the rest of the book is because there were occasional interesting bits. The rest of it was tedium and well known anecdotes. Personally, I would have thought a free copy overpriced. Very disappointed.

[Oche-Malik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A simply fascinating book that takes you on an interesting cultural and exploratory journey through the human body. I enjoyed reading this book and was in no rush to finish it once I discovered what a rare gem I had picked up. 'Anatomies' is a bidirectional view through a glass of the inborn capabilities of the body.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know why this gets so much hate. I really enjoyed this. It was a great exploration in history and culture. Not so much the actual anatomy but more the role the parts played in society and our relation to it. A very fun read and nicely flows from one topic to the next. Recommended to history buffs and anthropology fans. 10/10

[Jessie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting concept for a book, and full of interesting tidbits.
However, the organization and length of those tidbits makes it a little bit difficult to read. Stories I want to know more about are stopped short, moving on to the next with abrupt transitions.