The Body

A Guide for Occupants

Bill Bryson 2019 Bvt Lib 612 BRY

• Des Moines IA 1951 Dec 8, Drake University, Married 1975, 4 children, retired from writing books in 2020

Notes and bibliography and index, yay!

CH01 How to Build a Human

• 001-004 silliness about the cost of the elements in your body ... actually the cost of purifying those elements. That can be turned upside down; there are 10 tonnes of CO2 carbon above my 0.7 acres, and another 30 tonnes (est) of carbon in my trees and bushes and grass. A few more tonnes in the wood of my house, and the books on my shelf, call that 10 tonnes, for a total of 50 tonnes for a "home price" of perhaps $500K; $10/kg carbon. For the rest of the elements, dig down, there is plenty of everything, arguably $4.7 trillion dollars worth of elements and compounds.

The reference human is Benedict Cumberbatch, 78 kg, ( 18.5% carbon by weight hence 15 kg, so the limiting element of human existence (carbon) cost of a my-backyard-sourced Cumberbatch is $150. Using a less expensive carbon source (like coal, closing at $340/ton (907 kg) is $0.40 per kilogram, or about $6 per Cumberbatch. Humans add 40 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere per year, perhaps 11 billion tonnes of carbon, or about one million "carbon-Cumberbatchs" per second.

Personally, I believe one Cumberbatch is ample, and would prefer the atmospheric excess turns into 3000 big trees per second. As I write this, way too many Oregon trees are burning into CO2 instead.

• 007 DNA All Humans share 99.9 percent of their DNA (3 billion base pairs) typical differences 3 million base pairs, 100 unique mutations
• 009 37 trillion cells

CH02 skin and hair

• 011 Two square meters, 4 to 7 kg
• 012 live inner layer dermis, outer layer epidermis, outermost layer stratum corneum, dead cells replaced every month
  • one million flakes (squamae) per hour
  • 2M to 5M follicles, 4 to 10M sweat glands
• 013 Meissner's corpuscles sense light touch, Ruffini corpuscles sense HOT, Merkel cells pressure, Pacinian corpuscles sense 10nm vibration
• 014 Race/skin color is a millimeter layer of epidermis, pigmentation is more than 120 genes
• 015 all have same number of melanocytes, more melanin produced for some
• 016 lighter skin increases vitamin D synthesis
• 019 hairlessness 1.2 to 1.7 MYA
• 022 dermatoglyphics study of fingerprints, papillary ridges
• 023 155 lb man 42 quarts water, 1.5 quarts/day resting, 1.5q/h exertion, 7q mental impairment, 10q shock and death

CH03 microbes

• 031 commensals, benign bacteria, kissing samples histocompatibility genes
• 035 flu virus can survive 2.5 weeks on paper money
• 038 Robert Koch 1884 cholera bacillus, lab assistant Julius Petri, Fanny Hesse suggests agar growing medium.

• 042 Peoria lab assistant Mary Hunt, cantaloupe mold, penicillin -> 100 billion units per month

• 044 new antibiotics, 1950s to 1990s 3/y, now 1/2y
• 45 3/4 of 40M prescriptions for conditions antibiotics cannot cure
• 45 80% fed to farm animals. Penicillin for pneumonia, 40K units in 1945, now 20M units for many days

CH04 brain

• 49 Adult 2% weight, 20% energy 400 Cal/day (19.4W), 65% babies
  • compares muffin to laptop ... some are watt hogs, but Thinkpad 11e has TDP of 5 watts
• 50 86 billion neurons with as many as 400,000 synapses
• 57 1 year after 9/11, half contradicted earlier memories of where and how they learned of it
  • from business partner Chi-Song Horng, when he picked me up at a Motel 6 for a meeting at National Semiconductor. I postponed the meeting until I found a car to rent to drive home. Our contact Hossam Haggag feared deportation or worse.
• 59 if you can still recall something after half a minute, it is technically a long term memory
• 60 Henry Molaison, crippling epilepsy. 1953, surgeon removes part of hippocampus and amygdalae; seizures reduced but formed no new memories, demonstrating hippocampus memory formation
• 62 Teenage brain 80% finished, synapses still wiring
• 63 new neurons - 2018 Columbia U says yes in hippocampi, UCSF says no

• 66 Egas Moniz disciple W.J.Freeman performed 4000 lobotomies around US, 225 in 12 days on one tour. Ice pick in eye socket, and hammer

• 67 Bryson worked in London psych hospital, one ward was lobotomized obedient, lifeless shells.
• 68 laws against epileptic marriages, also involuntary sterlization

• 69 Into the Gray Zone author Owen believes 15 to 20% of "permanent vegetative state" patients are fully aware

CH05 head

• 80 white sparks in blue sky can be white blood cells trapped in capillaries in retina, blue sky sprites, (Richard) Scheer's blue field entoptic phenomena. Floaters are clumps of fibers in vitreous humor, muscae volitante

• 86 Stereocilia damaged by loud sound, but do not regenerate.
• 88 equalize ear pressure, Valsalva maneuver
• 90 350 to 400 odor receptors, only half shared by everyone

CH06 mouth and throat

• 100 Blowing out birthday candles increases cake surface bacteria up to 14x
• 101 tongue map a myth

CH07 heart and blood

CH08 body chemistry

CH09 skeleton

CH10 bipedalism

CH11 equilibrium

CH12 Immune system

• 201 bursa of Fabricus makes B cell lymphocytes in birds, bone marrow makes human B cells
  • 1955 Ohio state grad students Bruce Glick and Tony Chang

  • paper rejected by Science, published in Poultry Science, "one of the most cited papers in immunology"

• 205 Peter Medawar, 1940 skin graft rejection, Nobel Prize 1960 for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance

• 206 Kidney transplant between twins, Joseph Murray Nobel 1990 for work on immunosuppression ... cyclosporin

• 208 80% of autoimmune diseases occur in women

• 209 The Molecules Within us Charles A Pasternak 1998

• 210 the hygiene hypothesis 1989

CH13 Lungs

CH14 Food

CH15 Guts

CH16 Sleep

CH17 Sex

CH18 Pregnancy

CH19 Pain

CH20 Diseases

CH21 Cancer

CH22 Medicine

CH23 Death

MoreLater