Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this ambitious if uneven debut, physician and naturalist Reisman offers a "behind-the-scenes look at life itself" via an odyssey through the human body. Accompanied by stories from his experience practicing medicine around the world--"from a clinic in high-altitude Nepal to an emergency room in Arctic Alaska"--each chapter considers a different part of human anatomy to highlight "how those parts compose a whole." Rather than feature case studies of the sensational oddities, Reisman focuses on the more pedestrian cases that make up the bulk of his career as a generalist--such as "battling the fallout of the throat's flawed design" in caring for a patient with pneumonia, or walking a middle-aged man through his first heart attack. A particulary striking chapter on feces sees Reisman bluntly challenges taboos surrounding human excrement with the story of a patient whose debilitating diarrhea was treated with an experimental fecal transplant. Notwithstanding the deep curiosity driving his narrative, though, Reisman often slips into clichéd musings--for instance, in an essay on genitalia, he concludes with his own child's birth, making the trite observation that "nothing would ever be the same." Though its author is clearly well traveled, this work mostly treads familiar territory. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Reisman, a white American internist and naturalist, takes readers on a journey through the human body, with intriguing narratives about anatomy and treating patients around the world. Each chapter focuses on one part of human anatomy (skin; the lungs), its role, and what happens when it doesn't function. Within these chapters, Reisman recounts practicing medicine outside the continental U.S. (working at an Iñupiat clinic in Arctic Alaska; studying altitude-induced headaches in Nepal) and shares his discoveries about the human body and its connections to the rest of the natural world; this is where the book's greatest value lies. Reisman's passion and inquisitiveness are engaging even when topics turn to feces and cadavers, but readers should be warned about the book's detailed descriptions of invasive procedures. VERDICT An engaging book likely to pique the curiosity of readers interested in a wide range of medical conditions or naturalistic medicine.--Rich McIntyre Jr., UConn Health Sciences Lib., Farmington
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A physician describes his travels and adventures while educating us about our body parts. Reisman presents 15 compelling, sometimes scattershot chapters that mix personal experiences with lessons on anatomy--e.g., organs (lungs, heart, brain), fluids (blood, mucus, feces), and regions (genitals, throat, digits)--and even readers familiar with college biology will enjoy the experience. The author provides clear explanations of how blood must circulate, food enter and move steadily from one end of the body to the other, and urine, mucus, bile, and air flow smoothly. "A physician's task in treating disease," he writes, "is to alleviate blockages and allow fluids to resume their proper motion. In other words, most of the practice of medicine is plumbing." Doctors spend much of their day dealing with a leak or "a clog stopping up the flow of some fluid sloshing through the body's corporeal pipes." The author delivers his lessons in a few pages before taking up subjects that fascinate him, a strategy that mostly works. Frostbite and finger injuries, with which Reisman has long experience, take up most of the discussion of digits, while in the chapter on blood, the author discusses leeches and how they are sometimes applied to skin grafts to prevent veins from clotting. In another chapter, Reisman chronicles the liver's role in metabolism, a patient in the terrible throes of liver failure who was saved by a transplant, and his initial disgust with his relatives' beloved chopped liver. Curious after studies in medical school, he took his first taste during Thanksgiving dinner and discovered that he liked it. This leads into a section on his global travels, many of which involved the consumption of various animal parts: kidneys, pancreases, marrow, brain, lungs, and even eyeballs. Little is known about the pineal gland in the brain except that it seems to regulate sleep, so Reisman writes about his sleep-deprived training and the miseries of the hospital routine on patients and health professionals alike. Quirky, never-dull popular science. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
