The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. Lewis Thomas.

The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
Lewis Thomas
New York: The Viking Press. 1974

Why read it? This book by Lewis Thomas, a physician, is a series of essays consisting of ideas and reflections about medicine and a range of topics. Four of his ideas stood out when I read the book:

We use the most modern technology to transmit the most trivial ideas ("texting" in 2007).

The three levels of medical treatment from hopeless to expensive to complete cures that cost almost nothing.

Most of us most of the time are healthy, and nature usually cures by itself most of the time.

The last thought was about life after death. Where, he asks, do all the consciousnesses go?

Some ideas from the book:

Science. Just as insects and fish can join to make a complete organism, so the scientific community joins together, producing pieces of knowledge that are part of a total, incomplete jigsaw puzzle.

Man and nature. "Man is embedded in nature."

Human cells. "My cells...are ecosystems more complex than Jamaica Bay."

"Evolution is still an infinitely long and tedious biologic game, with only the winners staying at the table."

Ecology. "Every creature is, in some sense, connected to and dependent on the rest."

Technology. "Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk."

Science. "I suggest that we defer further action until we have acquired a really complete set of information concerning at least one living thing...."

Medical care. 1. Supportive therapy: Tides patients over through diseases that are not, by and large, understood...by simply providing reassurance and only the very best of doctors are good at coping with this kind of defeat.

2. Level Two: "It is a characteristic of this kind of technology that it costs an enormous amount of money and requires a continuing expansion of hospital facilities."

3. Level Three: "The third type of technology is the kind that is so effective that it seems to attract the least public notice; it has come to be taken for granted." "...comes as the result of a genuine understanding of disease mechanisms, and when it becomes available, it is relatively inexpensive, relatively simple, and relatively easy to deliver."

Death and consciousness. "There is still that permanent vanishing of consciousness to be accounted for: ...where on earth does it go?'

Health care. "Health care has become the new name for medicine and health care delivery is what doctors now do." "Meanwhile, we are paying too little attention, and respect, to the built-in durability and sheer power of the human organism." "...the absolute marvel of good health that is the real lot of most of us, most of the time." "The great secret, known to internists and learned early in marriage by internists' wives, but still hidden from the general public, is that most things get better by themselves."

Insects. "The wasp cannot imagine any other way of doing things."

Animals. "Animals seem to have an instinct for performing death alone, hidden."

Humanity. "We haven't yet learned how to stay human when assembled in masses."