Book review: Bill Bryson's -The Body, A Guide for Occupants

This was my first Bill Bryson. A tad bit old fashioned - I don't believe in acquiring knowledge by reading a book titled 'A short history of nearly everything'. To me, the pursuit of knowledge is a slow, carefully curated process. Yet, something about the title of this book 'A Guide for Occupants' was winsome. Having had years of work experience (and of course, life experience) with it and yet limited limited formal education in Biology - I liked how the title seems to indicate, we are just occupants of this beauty, and this book is merely a guide. 

There are a ton of good reviews that try to ‘shorten’ the rich information in these 400 pages and offer some of the most popular snippets from the book. If you are looking for one, I recommend this one from The Guardian. 

But most of all, I recommend reading the book. The hyperbole may tax you for a bit in the beginning, but in awhile, the reader would admire that Bryson’s passion was built on the able shoulders of very decent research. His description of the ‘cosmic sense’ of ourselves comes from a deep admiration of the many unknowns, knowns and discoveries about our bodies. The book is arranged into perfectly sized chapters carefully dedicated to parts of our body, body functions stringed together through birth and death. Chapters begin with brief quotes below some uninspiring little illustrations. The collection of these quotes is quite telling about the authors personal – lots of Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare- perhaps also testimony to his American- British life. Each chapter contains in equal parts contemporaneous knowledge of what we believe today richly coupled with how (more often than not via a painful share of human experiments) we reached this understanding, what still remains to be explored and gives credits to some forgotten heroes through this journey. And just in case the text starts seeming any less believable, in case the gory stories of lobotomy and mastectomy dull away as you read them, there’s a good collection of photographs in the book to remind you of how recent, painful and arduous this journey of knowledge has been. 

Of course, the Chapter ‘Medicine- Good and Bad’ I recommend to anyone working in the Pharmaceutical Industry. It is humbling to read through what medical science has administered, prescribed as safe and efficacious and how egregious some of these solutions look today. One of the pharmaceutical industry’s poster ‘bad-kids’ Purdue Pharma isn’t spared Bryson’s rod. Bryson is pretty fair though- he heartily acknowledges the industry’s significant role in many areas- the bit on containment of infectious diseases, child mortality and cancer survival rates are particularly compelling. There are some interesting links to a gentleman named Thomas McKeown’s work which I will go read up on more. The chapter ends with the line ‘In short, everyday attributes like empathy and common sense can be just as important as the most technologically sophisticated equipment’. Even without the specific context around this line- it’s great advise for any industry. 

 ‘A successful virus is one that doesn’t kill too well and can circulate widely’- and the current champion of this fame makes any reading of this book in 2020 impossible without pondering yet again about how the Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t just science fiction come alive. My edition of the book had a brief afterword from the writer from April 2020. Let’s hope next prints of this book continue to marvel at our rich ecosystems of bodies and lessons we learnt and implemented in their preservation.