Science buffs will enjoy Bill Bryson's book looks at human anatomy
One of the best things about reading award-winning author Bill Bryson’s book, “The Body: A Guide for Occupants,” is his clear, user-friendly language. While Bryson tackles the complex subject of how human bodies work, his entertaining writing style invites readers to join him in marveling at the amazing biological processes which keep us going, all without our conscious input.
His first chapter, “How to Build a Human,” contains some big numbers–really, really big numbers about really, really small things, like cells and atoms. According to Bryson, our red blood cells replicate at the rate of 1 million per second. “Each of these blood cells,” he writes, “will rattle around you about 150,000 times, repeatedly delivering oxygen to your cells.” But the number of blood cells is nothing compared to the number of atoms you contain–that number being 7 billion billion billion, he says: “that’s 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 7 octillion atoms to make you.”
Bryson believes that our DNA is the most “remarkable” part of human bodies. “You have a meter of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if you formed all the DNA in your body into a single strand, it would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto.” How can there be approximately 3 feet of this material packed into a single cell? The reason, says Bryson, is that “it is exquisitely thin. You would need 20 billion strands of DNA laid side by side to make the width of the finest human hair. Every cell nucleus in your body holds two copies of your DNA. That’s why you have enough to stretch to Pluto and beyond.”
With chapters on the body’s sleep patterns, digestion, immune system, heart and lungs, the stages of fetal development, and more, there is so much interesting information to learn in this book. You can read it from start to finish, or just dip into the chapter topics that you are most curious about. I was particularly intrigued by the chapter titled “When Things Go Wrong: Diseases,” because of all the variables Bryson mentions. For example, why do some people get very sick from a disease, while others may hardly notice feeling ill?
“Whether or not a disease becomes epidemic,” Bryson says, “is dependent on four factors: how lethal it is, how good it is at finding new victims, how easy or difficult it is to contain, and how susceptible it is to vaccines. Most really scary diseases are not actually very good at all four.” Bryson notes that the Ebola virus, for example, is extremely lethal, but because of that, those who contract it usually sicken and die so quickly it can’t spread very effectively.
“A successful virus is one that doesn’t kill too well and can circulate widely,” Bryson says, adding that “the great Spanish flu of 1918 racked up a global death toll of tens of millions–some estimates put it as high as a hundred million–not by being especially lethal, but by being persistent and highly transmissible. It killed only about 2.5 percent of victims.” If not for the fact Bryson’s book came out in 2019, right before the pandemic, I might have thought he was writing about Covid-19.
If you enjoy books on popular science topics, check out Bryson’s fascinating book. It’s available to borrow in either regular or large print editions at Carlsbad Public Library.
This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: Science buffs will enjoy Bill Bryson's book looks at human anatomy
