The Body – A Guide for Occupants

Title: The Body – A Guide for Occupants

Author: Bill Bryson

Publisher: DoubleDay, 2019 (First)

ISBN: 9780857522405

Pages: 454

 

Bill Bryson is a gifted author for presenting profound concepts fully suffused with humour. He does this often so effortlessly that the readers cherish the opportunity to read one of his books. I am really a fan of him, having read many of his other works. This book is about the human body, the long-suffering servant of the soul. The various subsystems and functions of the body are examined in a light-hearted and appealing way. It deals with birth and death, organs from the skin to the brain, activities like breathing and digestion and how we came to acquire the knowledge of them historically. This book is the easiest way for a lay reader to comprehend what is going on inside and outside our frame and more importantly, to marvel at the working of this wonderful artifact of eons of evolution. It is also to be noted that though the body appears to be arranged neat and tidy from the outside, the inside is haphazard and messy at times.

 

The sense of awe and wonder one feels at the mechanisms that regulate various body parameters is immense. The way white blood cells attack pathogens, how dead cells are replenished in many organs but not all, the mechanism of hearing or vision are all so complicated that people who ascribe an all-powerful creator behind this magic may reasonably be pardoned. You see Bryson exclaiming with wonder, “and you can appreciate what an accomplished creation we are”! You should forgive the author for the remark on ‘creation’ which is used here only as a figure of speech. Bryson is devoted to evolution as the raison d’etre of all lifeforms. He calmly explains how the miraculous functions of a human body part are only an extension of a comparable organ in animals more closely related to humans. It is this solid foundation on modern rational thought that makes this work a pleasure to read. With this underpinning on science, you feel confident to recommend the book to others, especially with impressionable minds.

 

We know that modern science has collected a vast amount of knowledge about the human body, especially on its response to extreme stimulants over the centuries. The author notes that some of it might have come from the gruesome clinical experiments carried out by Nazi doctors on their unfortunate Jewish prisoners or that by Japanese military physicians on Chinese and other prisoners of war during World War II. In Nazi Germany, healthy prisoners were subjected to amputation or experimental limb implants in the hopes of finding better treatments for German casualties. Russian prisoners were plunged into icy water to determine how long a German pilot could survive a downing at sea. Some experiments were driven by nothing more than morbid curiosity. In one, the subject’s eyes were injected with dyes to see if their eye colour could be permanently changed. In fact, many doctors were not forced to perform such experiments, they just volunteered.

 

Bryson not only asserts that evolution is the only plausible mechanism that could bring about the complexity in lifeforms, but attacks Intelligent Design with examples of inconsistencies and ‘not-so-intelligent’ design. If ever there was an event that challenged the concept of Intelligent Design, it is the act of childbirth, in which a large head is passing through a much smaller constriction which came about as a byproduct of bipedalism. The author quips that ‘no woman, however devout, has ever in childbirth said, “Thank you, Lord, for thinking this through for me”. Then, there is a slight inconsistency in the narrative, which, if not cleared by experts would confuse the readers much. The book claims that the moment of birth is quite a miracle. In the womb, the foetus’ lungs are filled with amniotic fluid, but with exquisite timing, at the moment of birth, the fluid drains away, the lungs inflate and blood from the tiny heart is sent on its first circuit around the body (p.299). But in the caption to a colour plate of a foetus of six weeks, it is said that its heart is beating at hundred beats per minute. Is it circulating amniotic fluid through the veins at that time?

 

This book provides clear warnings for health-conscious readers. Coconut oil is said to be essentially nothing but saturated fat in liquid form. It may be tasty, but it is no better than a big scoop of deep fried butter (p.244). This is indeed very bad news for people in Kerala where we know of no other oil than that which is extracted from the hardy coconut and used for practically all purposes like bathing, cooking, cosmetics and others. The text also includes detailed description of diseases that affect us and the precautions that can be taken against them. The pharma industry’s relentless pursuit of finding cures for diseases is also commented upon. However, the author leaves a hint that many germs have by now attained resistance to common antibiotics and future diseases could become more virulent. He warns that the reason we haven’t had another disastrous experience like the Spanish Flu isn’t because we have been especially vigilant, but because we have been lucky (p.335). It is a strange coincidence that just a few months after the publication of this book, Covid 19 struck the world with a devastating trail of death and misery.

 

One sad fact you’d observe in this latest book from Bryson is the absence of his immensely enjoyable humour. Every page of his previous books had made the readers smile with witty remarks, but not this one. This book is definitely valuable, but only for the tons of useful information packed between its covers and arranged in meaningful chapters. It rightly deserves the epithet of a popular science book, but that’s not the richly fulfilling experience a reader expects from Bryson. Anyhow, the personal touch can still be felt, and the last paragraph would make you ponder on the meaning of life itself. It runs like this: ‘The average grave is visited only for about fifteen years, so most of us take a lot longer to vanish from the earth than from others’ memories. If you are cremated, your ashes will weigh about two kilograms. And that’s you gone. But it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?’

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star