What to read to understand the body

Mr Humble & Dr Butcher: A Monkey’s Head, the Pope’s Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul by Brandy Schillace (2021)

In the 1970s, in a laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio, a surgeon named Robert White swapped out the heads on a pair of monkeys. The idea is that rather than replacing organs and joints piecemeal, one could simply install an entire replacement body. Which he did. (Since it’s not possible to reattach severed spinal cord nerves, the recipient is paralysed.) Schillace dives into the science and ethics with zeal and heart.

The Unseen Body: A Doctor’s Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy by Jonathan Reisman (2021)

Reisman’s vision of our bodies is extraordinary, moving and poetic: the rivers and tributaries, the flows and clogs, the brain at the top, calling the plays. He makes us see the beauty of what lies within us – not just our organs but all of it, right down to our mucus (which gets its own chapter).

Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Dead by Peter Manseau (2009)

A novelist and a religion scholar, Manseau writes beautifully – with respect and humour – about the veneration of saints’ toes, teeth, foreskins and more, a practice likely older, and certainly stranger, than any other religious acts carried out today. Because these relics are not unique to Christianity, Manseau wanders from Jerusalem to India, Kashmir and Sri Lanka, making the book not only an insightful treatise on life, death and faith but also a uniquely entertaining travelogue.

Mary Roach is an American science writer. Her new book Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy (Oneworld, £18.99) is available to order from The Observer Shop for £17.09. Delivery charges may apply

Illustration courtesy of Alamy