Overview

An outstanding investigation into the functioning of the human body - original, stimulating and highly entertaining. In this remarkable book Jonathan Miller considers the functioning of the body as a subject of private experience. He explores our attitudes towards the body, our astonishing ignorance about certain parts of it and our inability to read its signals. Taking as his starting point the experience of pain, Dr Miller explores the elaborate social process of 'falling ill', considers the physical foundations of 'dis-ease' and looks at the types of individuals man has historically attributed with the power of healing. His explanations are so lucid, so wide-ranging and so whole-heartedly entertaining it is often hard to believe one is reading about the facts of one's own body and what can go wrong with it. His use of metaphor and suggestive models, particularly when tracing the historical development of certain leading ideas in human physiology, is highly stimulating. Above all, there is the keen originality and sheer enthusiasm of Dr Miller's approach to his subject which makes The Body in Question such an outstanding book.

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9780712665995

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Reviews

The book will stand by itself as a tribute to the ingenuity of nature and to those who try to unravel its secrets New York Magazine He manages to synthesize physiology, medicine, psychology, philosophy, history and art with astonishing skill, clarity, erudition and wit... the most complex subjects are rendered comprehensible and entertaining... An excellent book which bridges two cultures -- David Mendel Observer [The Body in Question] reveals the range and variety of the author's skills: those of a physician, (especially a neurologist), a comparative anatomist and a philosopher... Among the various allotropes of Jonathan Miller cited above, we must number also the entertainer and the wit: Miller is exceedingly amusing... His text is distinguished by innumerable felicities of thought or expression -- P. B. Medawar Times Literary Supplement A brilliant mixture of medical, metaphorical and philosophical commentary -- Richard Holmes The Times This tour de force has... sheer gusto and kinetic energy Guardian

The body is human, and Jonathan Miller - producer/actor (Beyond the Fringe), writer, physician, and student of the history of medicine - writes about it with style and respect. The lavishly illustrated text will form the basis of a public television series aimed at explaining essential body functions such as breathing, circulation, and movement, as well as offering general information on health and disease, genetics, and nervous system function. The point of view is historical, tracing the evolution of biological ideas from Greek and Roman times through the Harveys and Lavoisiers down to contemporary schools. Miller stresses the relatedness of biological theories to the general cultural climate - political theory, theology, invention, art, and other science. (The idea of the heart as a pump could hardly have developed in ancient times in the absence of mechanical devices.) Miller involves the reader by beginning with vivid descriptions of the self-image of individuals who have suffered major setbacks - the paralysis or aphasia of the stroke victim, for example. This leads to a discussion of the role of the nervous system which is continued in the final chapter - certainly a neat bracketing of any discourse on human physiology. In addition to the good but traditional material in the chapters on specific functions, Miller's general chapters on health and disease offer a few novelties. A chapter on Self-Help, for example, reminds us that fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and pain, ghastly as they are, are the body's vital lines of defense. These inclusions, the cultural perspective, and the overall excellent exposition (precisely suited to a PBS audience) make the text outstanding for books of this kind. (Kirkus Reviews)

The history of medicine and how different ages and cultures have regarded the human body, is not a sequential discovery of obvious facts that build up to a modern model. It is difficult to unlearn what we know now of certain physical functions and to understand how ages past have seen the world and themselves. The way Jonathan Miller guides us through these ideas is through analogy - for example, until the water pump was commonly used, using it as an analogy of how the heart worked would have been beyond comprehension. Thus people have always equated bodily functions and sensations with ideas current in technology and society, and once these have been superceded, new analogies take their place. This fascinating exploration of revelations past and current reveals that we are far from a definitive set of answers, yet have developed our own set of analogies - that the body is just as mysterious, and yet rationalized within our contemporary imagination. In the 1970s The Body in Question was a groundbreaking series on BBC TV. This is not the 'book of the TV series' but rather, the book on which the ideas for the TV series was based. It is sparsely illustrated with diagrams, but clearly depicts these concepts through apt descriptions and odd facts about the body, which is after all within all our own experience. This book will make you consider yourself in the wondering and questioning way you perhaps did in childhood, pondering where thought lies in the body, what pain is, and how certain parts of the body know what their function is. Despite the benefit of modern methods of information-gathering and the vast amount of knowledge which has been gained about the body, this book is a reminder that as humans we are still subject to breathtaking assumptions about ourselves, since our understanding is through imagination and the subjective perception of the world in which we live. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Jonathan Miller was born in London in 1934. He read Natural Sciences at Cambridge and qualified as a Doctor of Medicine in 1959. In 1961 he co-authored and appeared in Beyond the Fringe with Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. On his return to England in 1964, after the New York run of Beyond the Fringe, he was invited to edit and present Monitor, the weekly arts programme on BBC television. Since then he has made frequent and various contributions to public broadcasting. He produced and directed the TV film of Alice in Wonderland in 1966, and wrote and presented the thirteen-part documentary series The Body in Question in 1976. Between 1980 and 1982 he was the executive producer of the BBC's Shakespeare series. He conducted fifteen personal interviews with psychologists in a series entitled States of Mind, later published as a book. He has also written and presented a television series on language, and another on the history of mental illness. He has worked extensively in the classical theatre, directing productions in Nottingham, Stratford, Chichester and at the Old Vic. For two years he was the artistic director of the Old Vic. His opera career started in 1974 and since then he has directed productions at most of the leading opera houses in the world, including the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, the English National Opera, the Maggio Musicale in Florence, La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Deutsche Staatsopher in Berlin, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and the Salzburg Festival. In 1998 he curated an exhibition at the National Gallery in London, entitled 'Mirror Image'. His books include McLunhan in the Modern Masters series, Darwin for Beginners, States of Mind, Subsequent Performances, On Reflection and a book of his own photographs, Nowhere in Particular. In 1997 he was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London and in 1998 he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. He is also a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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