Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

by Gavin Francis

Overview

"Adventures in Human Being, with its deft mix of the clinical and the lyrical, is a triumph of the eloquent brain and the compassionate heart." -- Wall Street Journal

We assume we know our bodies intimately, but for many of us they remain uncharted territory, an enigma of bone and muscle, neurons and synapses. How many of us understand the way seizures affect the brain, how the heart is connected to well-being, or the why the foot holds the key to our humanity? In Adventures in Human Being, award-winning author Gavin Francis leads readers on a journey into the human body, offering a guide to its inner workings and a celebration of its marvels. Drawing on his experiences as a surgeon, ER specialist, and family physician, Francis blends stories from the clinic with episodes from medical history, philosophy, and literature to describe the body in sickness and in health, in living and in dying. At its heart, Adventures in Human Being is a meditation on what it means to be human. Poetic, eloquent, and profoundly perceptive, this book will transform the way you view your body.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465096824
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/25/2016
Edition description:	First Edition, First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	327,753
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Gavin Francis is a physician and the award-winning author of four books, including Adventures in Human Being, Empire Antarctica; and True North. A regular contributor to the London Review of Books, Guardian, and New York Review of Books, Francis lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Table of Contents

A note on confidentiality
Prologue

Brain
1. Neurosurgery of the Soul
2. Seizures, Sanctity & Psychiatry

Head
3. Eye: A Renaissance of Vision
4. Face: Beautiful Palsy
5. Inner Ear: Voodoo & Vertigo

Chest
6. Lung: Breath of Life
7. Heart: On Seagull Murmurs, Ebb & Flow
8. Breast: Two Views on Healing

Upper Limb
9. Shoulder: Arms & Armour
10. Wrist & Hand: Punched, Cut & Crucified

Abdomen
11. Kidney: The Ultimate Gift
12. Liver: A Fairy-Tale Ending
13. Large Bowel & Rectum: A Magnificent Work of Art

Pelvis
14. Genitalia: Of Making Babies
15. Womb: Thresholds of Life & Death
16. Afterbirth: Eat It, Burn It, Bury It Under a Tree

Lower Limb
17. Hip: Jacob & the Angel
18. Feet & Toes: Footsteps in the Basement

Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Notes on Sources
List of Images
Index

Editorial Reviews

The Independent (UK) -- Best Summer Reads
2015 Saltire Literary Award -- Non-Fiction Book of the Year

"Delightful."—Economist

"Engaging and edifying."—New York Review of Books

"A sober and beautiful book about the landscape of the human body."—Hilary Mantel

"It is grand, eloquent stuff, occasionally humorous, frequently moving, and invariably informative. In other hands, Adventures in Human Being might well have become cluttered with cliché, detail or sentimentality but Francis has a lightness of touch that helps him avoid these pitfalls. His use of quotes is sparing but erudite and his lack of self-importance--often a failing in his profession--is welcome. The end result is a thoroughly entertaining, provocative work."—The Guardian

"That Adventures in Human Being is an astonishing, moving and enchanting book can be explained in part by Francis's unique range of experience, his erudition and his enthusiasm."—New Statesman

"[Francis] offers an unusually upbeat medical perspective.... His essays form a kind of anatomical atlas in which Francis proceeds from head to toe, stopping along the way to explore the lungs, genitalia, liver, and other organs."—Boston Globe

"[A] brilliantly original and highly engaging book that takes you on a journey that is both familiar and unfamiliar, a book that marries both the physical and metaphysical with such imaginative wit and eloquence."—The Independent (UK)

"Clever, strangely beautiful.... The style is crisp and fast and the human tales irresistible."—The Times (London)

"[Francis] is a fine, subtle and observant writer... this is an illuminating and arresting book."—Herald Scotland

From the Publisher

2015-07-15
Doctors with literary ambitions write memoirs, tell stories about patients, or educate us. Scottish physician Francis (Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins, 2013, etc.) successfully combines all three. In 18 chapters on 18 body parts, the author delivers no-nonsense lessons on anatomy and biology, each illustrated with a patient plus regular detours into medical history, medical scandal, and his own colorful life. "This book is a series of stories about the body in sickness and in health, in living and dying," he writes at the beginning. A man appears with a nail through his palm or a wine bottle in his rectum. A depressive, immobile and silent for years, slowly begins to move and speak, more each day after a series of electroshocks to his brain. A couple undergoes the detailed unpleasantness of an infertility exam and then the even more detailed and unpleasant (and expensive) procedure for in vitro fertilization. Other chapters provide odd, penetrating insights—e.g., poets undergo open-heart surgery or breast cancer mastectomy and reveal the experience in verse. Even experienced doctors will perk up at some of the author's digressions. One example: the Romans could not have crucified Jesus as traditionally described. Tissues in the palm are too fragile to support a man's weight (the experiment has been done). Nails through the wrist would have worked. Many anecdotes are the bizarre sort that medical students employ to impress other people, and Francis portrays himself as a healer of almost supernatural compassion, but he has enjoyed a spectacularly varied career as a general practitioner, emergency room doctor, and volunteer in third world clinics and polar exploration. The result is plenty of good material, and he possesses the writing talent to bring it to life. Henry Marsh's Do No Harm remains this year's medical memoir to beat, but Francis acquits himself well.

Kirkus Reviews