Alice Roberts

A difficult to like and difficult to access book. I couldn’t really see where it was pitched. I quite like the writing style and initial introduction had me intrigued, but it was difficult to follow as an audiobook and I do wonder whether having pictures of the different types of horticulture and agriculture that was on, the authors mind would’ve been really useful. I think there’s a lot here that’s worth listening to and I think that anyone with an interesting environmental science will also enjoy this. There is also an audience here for people who have an interest in the near future, and in particular, the effects of climate change on that.… (mehr)

Anatomical Oddities is an attractive nonfiction book that is something of a niche read. It would likely be most appreciated by someone who’s both an anatomy and an etymology enthusiast. Author Alice Roberts, a specialist in human anatomy and physiology, explores the human body and traces “stories of discovery in human anatomy.” She features over fifty structures (drawing on multiple body systems), often explaining how those structures function, and giving careful consideration to their names. She notes that around two thirds of medical terms are Greek, usually passed through a Latin filter, and sometimes through an Arabic one. (During the Dark Ages, 500-1100 AD, it was Muslim scholars who preserved medical and scientific knowledge.)

The names of some body parts point to what those things look like, and the use of metaphors is common. Hence we have the kidney’s glomerulus, a knot of capillaries (tiny blood vessels), involved in filtering the blood and producing raw urine. Glomerulus is the diminutive form of “glomus”, Latin for “a ball of yarn”, which is pretty much what this structure looks like. Other anatomical names tell what structures do. For example, a ligament—from the Latin noun “ligamentum”, a binding or bandage—binds bones together. Finally, some of our body parts are named after those who discovered them. Within the shafts of long bones, networks of blood vessels run through longitudinal channels, called Haversian canals, named after British physican Clopton Havers. Using a microscope, he’d discovered pores, evidence of those channels. No, he couldn’t see the blood vessels in them, and he believed that they allowed oil from the marrow to permeate the bone . . . but still, he did identify those channels in the late 17th century.

I’m not clear about the author’s criteria for the selection of her oddities. Some of the body parts featured didn’t strike me as particularly unusual. Why were sphincters— donut-shaped rings of muscle that can relax (and open) or tighten (and close)— included? We humans have quite a few, but I fail to see what so odd about them. The duodenum, the first part of the small intestine, into which partially digested food from the stomach is emptied, also doesn’t seem overly remarkable either. Was it because of the name, from the Latin meaning “twelve each”? The Greek physician Herophilus (353-280) apparently discovered that this structure was 12 finger-widths in length.

This brings me to one of my main complaints about the book. I am interested in etymology, but the author really goes into the weeds at times. Her discussion of the origin of the word thyroid, from the Greek “thyreos”, is a case in point:

“The word thyreos means a ‘door-shaped’ shield—coming from a hypothetical Proto-Indo-European word dhwer, which becomes duvara in Old Persian and the more familiar dor in Old English. The leading consonant changes in Latin to give us forum—for a public space, outdoors.”

Some sections read a little too much like anatomy textbook entries. Unlike the images found in good anatomy texts, however, the illustrations here are poor. They’re too small and lack detail. While I do have some knowledge of human anatomy, it’s not recent, and the densely detailed descriptions were sometimes hard going. I had to check for clearer online anatomical images to help me understand them. I can’t imagine attempting to read this book without any prior knowledge of anatomical features or terms. (I have no complaints about the author’s own imaginative artistic renderings of body parts. They’re quite delightful and make a very nice addition.)

There’s a wealth of information in this book, some of it quite fascinating, but I’m afraid that reading it was a bit more work than expected. I can’t say I found it consistently enjoyable.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with an advance reading copy for review purposes.… (mehr)