Anatomical Oddities

Product Information

I have an impression of early anatomists, almost exclusively men, poring over the intricate structures of the human body and becoming quite excited when they found anything that reminded them of a bit of female anatomy. It’s extraordinary how many parts of the body, apart from the breasts themselves, are named after breasts and nipples.” This quote, which made me laugh out loud, was in reference to the mammillary bodies that are situated in the brain—far away from what we think of as female accoutrements. O! How an art-full, word-mad book about the body can exercise the mind.” —from the foreword by Holly Dunsworth There are both permanent and special exhibitions, including the Broken Bodies, Suffering Spirits: Injury, Death, and Healing in Civil War Philadelphia. Roberts's engagingly personal style connects you to your ancestors, to your own personal beginnings as a single cell and, in a most attractive way, to herself as an author of great charm. From your brain to your fingertips, you emerge from her book entertained and with a deeper understanding of yourself.”—Richard Dawkins Roberts's engagingly personal style connects you to your ancestors, to your own personal beginnings as a single cell and, in a most attractive way, to herself as an author of great charm. From your brain to your fingertips, you emerge from her book entertained and with a deeper understanding of yourself.”— Richard Dawkins

This article was originally published with the title "If Humans Were Built to Last" in SA Special Editions 24, 1s, 106-111 (March 2015) O! How an art-full, word-mad book about the body can exercise the mind.”—from the foreword by Holly DunsworthAt this point in history, we need to exploit our expanding knowledge of evolution to enhance the quality of our lives as we grow older because the single-minded pursuit of life extension without considering health extension could be disastrous. Buried is a tender, fascinating act of listening—of listening to the tales the dead have to tell us about the landscapes we share with them, the histories we have constructed around them, and the futures we imagine for ourselves. Lucid and illuminating.”— Robert Macfarlane There are countless other aspects of human biology that would merit modification if health and longevity were nature's primary objective. For example, gerontologists theorize that aging is caused, in part, by a combination of the molecular damage that inevitably arises from operating the machinery of life within cells and the imperfect mechanisms for molecular surveillance, maintenance and repair that permit damage to accumulate over time. If this view of the aging process is correct, then modifying these molecular processes to lessen the severity or accumulation of damage, or to enhance the maintenance and repair processes, should have a beneficial impact on health and longevity. These wondrous modifications, however, would have little effect unless the common sense that is needed to avoid destructive lifestyles becomes more widespread among people. Gorgeous and full of wise quotes and stories that we would all do well to heed in today’s crazy world.”— Jim Al-Khalili An excellent point of entry for anyone who wants to understand the new deep human history and what it portends.”— Guardian

Bulging disks, fragile bones, fractured hips, torn ligaments, varicose veins, cataracts, hearing loss, hernias and hemorrhoids: the list of bodily malfunctions that plague us as we age is long and all too familiar. Why do we fall apart just as we reach what should be the prime of life?

The Man Behind The Museum, Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter

Even the term “flaw” requires clarification. Living things, and everything they make, eventually fail. The cause of failure is a flaw only when the failure is premature. A race car that fails beyond the end of the race has no engineering flaws. In the same way, bodies that fail in the postreproductive span of life may contain numerous design oddities, but they have no design flaws as far as evolution goes. Roberts . . . finds that our uniqueness is often more complicated and surprising than we could have imagined.” — Forbes