We think of ourselves as a global species. But our bodies can only survive unsupported on a fraction of the Earth’s surface. We’ve evolved to live in a temperate climate at sea level, yet our relentless desire to explore has pushed us higher and deeper to every corner of the planet. Dr Kevin Fong, To Boldly Go, BBC 2016
The incredible depth of 96 metres – this ability to change our physiology under water is something we share with all mammals – it’s called the Dive Reflex … A sperm whale can reach 3,000 metres. ibid.
Three-quarters of the world’s population live below five hundred metres … It’s the decreasing amount of oxygen in the air that explains the effects of altitude on our physiology. Dr Kevin Fong, To Boldly Go II
The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd. Friedrich Nietzsche
Patient: I want to die with a little dignity.
Dr House: There’s no such thing. Our bodies break down. Sometimes when we’re ninety. Sometimes before we’re even born. But it always happens … And there’s never any dignity in it. I don’t care if you can walk, see or wipe your own arse. It’s always ugly. Always. House, Fox 2004-2012
If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong. Thomas Jefferson
Why should a man’s mind have been thrown into such close, sad, sensational inexplicable relations with such a precarious object as his body? Thomas Hardy
Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs. Aldous Huxley
I’d the upbringing a nun would envy … Until I was fifteen I was more familiar with Africa than my own body. Joe Orton, Entertaining Mr Sloan, 1964
The world’s most pierced woman, Brazilian Elaine Davidson, puts her finger through her pierced tongue! So far she has 1,903 body piercings. Elaine has also been known to walk on beds of fire, broken glass, and nails. For her next feat she wants to exceed 2,000 piercings! Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! 2006
Death alone reveals how small are men’s poor bodies. Juvenal, Satires no. 10
A sound mind in a sound body. ibid.
It is strange, is it not, how a person can adore one’s soul so much that they adore one’s body also? Peter Ackroyd, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
The paralysed baseball star who has stepped into medical history: First steps down a long road: the paralysed man who walked again. The Guardian 20th May 2011
I’m falling apart here. Midnight Cowboy 1969 starring John Voight & Dustin Hoffman & Sylvia Miles & John McGiver & Brenda Vaccaro & Barnard Hughes & Ruth White & Jennifer Salt & Tina Scala et al, director John Schlesinger, Rizzo to Joe Buck
We investigate the impact in extraordinary advances in medical technology. Saving patients from heart attacks. Implants that allow deaf children to hear. But with high engineering comes high risk. We reveal why a hip replacement could cause long term health problems for thousands of people ... We question how well the safety regulations protect patients. Dispatches: The Truth About Under the Knife, Channel 4 2011
The ASR hip they are taking out was made by the DePuy Company ... Microscopic fragments can break off in the body. ibid.
San Diego: All the big companies pay the orthopaedic surgeons to work with them. ibid.
They’ve thrown us out of the conference. ibid.
We reveal the rule that allows some medical devices to be implanted in the body with almost no testing at all. ibid.
It may surprise patients that reps are in theatre. ibid.
He also discovered Medtronic had issued a safety notice after receiving reports of five deaths. ibid.
The regulations allow them [companies] to use the evidence of other products already on sale without proving how their own version improves patients. ibid.
It’s the NHS that may have to pick up the tag. ibid.
An alien world is about to be explored. It will be scrutinised and probed. Our guts. A mysterious organ: writhing tubes, corrosive acid and home to its own unique ecosystem. It’s dirty work. Michael Mosley, Guts: The Strange and Mysterious World of the Human Stomach, BBC 2012
So much pulsing and throbbing movement. ibid.
The average human stomach can expand ... a forty-fold increase. ibid.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the intestine is that buried deep inside its tissue is a very thin layer of brain. ibid.
The guts of extroverts and neurotics respond to pain in very different ways. ibid.
Bacteria: there are trillions of them and they form their own mini eco-system. They feed on the food that my small intestine wasn’t able to digest. ibid.
Parasites: to most people they are simply revolting. Even the word parasite is an insult. Disgusting they may be but I think they are also truly extraordinary. Michael Mosley, Infested! Living with Parasites, BBC 2014
The tateworm is one of Nature’s most successful parasites. ibid.
An extraordinary condition: he has another body growing out of his chest. Deepak’s extra limbs make him the centre of attention wherever he goes. Every year his extra limbs keep growing. The 8-Limbed Boy: Extraordinary People, Channel 5 2013
An identical twin that didn’t fully form or separate from him while he was in the womb. It’s known as a parasitic twin. ibid.
Fear and superstition greeted his birth. ibid.
Deepak is now entirely free of his parasitic twin. ibid.
Black market plastic surgery: ‘the process of pumping – or injecting silicone into the breast, lips and buttocks – is common practice.’ American Outsiders s1e2: Body Shock
There are about 700,000 transgender people in the US. ibid.
Allergic to the World: Trapped by a mysterious medical condition: ‘I’m Pat; I’m allergic to everything.’ ibid.
85-90% of patients claiming MCSD symptoms are women. ibid.
A mysterious disease: a disease that causes her body to produce twelve times the normal amount of skin cells from her hair follicles. Shanya is the only known person on the planet whose hair has been transformed into hard, brittle nails that do not grow like hair but slice their way through her skin with the consistency of a finger nail. ibid.
For this real-life Popeye world record arms are not enough. ibid.
Our hands and our feet – two parts of our body that define us as human. Dr George McGavin, Dissected: The Incredible Human Hand I, BBC 2014
Power is the first key attribute of the hand. ibid.
It’s the thumb that’s the most versatile and most important. ibid.
The incredible natural engineering that carries our weight and drives every step we take. Dr George McGavin, Dissected: Foot
Keeping them warm and keeping them in shoes has added to the strain we put on them. ibid.
The body cannot live without the mind. The Matrix 1999 starring Keanu Reeves & Laurence Fishburne & Carrie-Anne Moss & Hugo Weaving & Joe Pantoliano & Gloria Foster & Marcus Chong & ulian Arahanga & Matt Doran & Belinda McClory & Anthony Ray Parker et al, directors Wachowski brothers
Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it. Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants
People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn’t own doodley-squat, so they couldn’t improve their surroundings so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead. Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s-self is. Walt Whitman
Having a body is in itself the greatest threat to the mind ... The body encloses the mind in a fortress; before long the mind is besieged on all sides, and in the end the mind has to give itself up. Marcel Proust