Pig Hearts and Frog Skin: Mary Roach Tackles the Quest to Rebuild the Body
In Replaceable You, the science writer surveys medicine’s greatest breakthroughs and strangest failures, from cataract surgery to polyester hair transplants.
Illustration: Ard Su for Bloomberg
When Paul McCartney was growing up in Liverpool, his father suggested he have all his teeth ripped out at 21 — replacing them now would save him the trouble of letting them rot one by one. In certain mid-century American and British circles, these preemptive dentures were considered a prudent rite of passage.
This is just one example of humanity’s centuries-long quest to recreate lost or malfunctioning body parts, and one of many chronicled in Mary Roach’s Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy (W.W. Norton, Sept. 16). The popular science writer’s ninth book is part cautionary tale — an appropriate subtitle might be “a history of terrible ideas” — and part celebration of all that modern medicine has achieved.