Just Finished Reading: Adventures in Human Being – A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum by Gavin Francis (FP: 2015)

Told literally from head to foot this was an interesting take on both the human body, health and disease in all its aspects – both pleasant and not – and the practice of medicine during a very varied career across the globe from the Himalayas, the North Pole and the streets of Edinburgh.
Examining each body part or section in turn – brains, livers, feet and so on – and the conditions that affect us all – cancer, infertility, kidney stones, cataracts – the author (presently a physician in Edinburgh) draws out features, quirks and insights of each element using historical examples from medical practice through the ages, the latest scientific breakthroughs and his own ‘hands on’ experience in hospital trauma units, as a general practitioner and during his sojourns in the mountains of Tibet and during an Antarctica expedition where he had to learn everything from emergency dentistry to trouble shooting a GPS system.

Designed as a meditation on what it means to be human – in all its glory and its failings – this well-deserved award winning text (Economist Best Book of 2015 and Observer Best Science Book of 2015) is quite honestly both fascinating and more than a little icky in places (not a huge fan of other people’s blood and less savoury items even textually). But if you have a reasonably strong stomach – or are simply less squeamish than me – I think you’ll get a lot from this. I learnt quite a bit about how things join up, how and why things go wrong, how messy the human body is – definitely not designed by anything other than evolution that’s for sure – and how medicine is still learning to successfully diagnose and, with greater power and precision, actually fix things.

It’s been interesting delving into actual medicine over the last few months. Personally I try to avoid doctors as much as possible if I can help it but it’s good to have an appreciation of what they have to go through to at least try to help us in times of often desperate need. Much more human biology/medicine to come. Next up is one of my favourite human activities – sleep!