Fountaindale Public Library

The song of the cell, an exploration of medicine and the new human, Siddhartha Mukherjee

eng

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other

The song of the cell

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1345698030

Siddhartha Mukherjee

an exploration of medicine and the new human

In the late 1600s, a distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, and an eccentric Dutch cloth merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, look down their handmade microscopes. What they see introduces a radical concept that sweeps through biology and medicine, touching virtually every aspect of the two sciences and altering both forever. It is the fact that complex living organisms are assemblages of tiny, self-contained, self-regulating units. Our organs, our physiology, our selves - hearts, blood, brains - are built from these compartments. Hooke christens them cells. The discovery of cells - and reframing of the human body as a cellular ecosystem - announced the birth of a new kind of medicine based on the therapeutic manipulations of cells. A hip fracture, a cardiac arrest, Alzheimer's, dementia, AIDS, pneumonia, lung cancer, kidney failure, arthritis, COVID - all could be viewed as the results of cells, or systems of cells, functioning abnormally. And all could be perceived as loci of cellular therapies. In this book, Mukherjee tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new treatments and new humans. Mukherjee seduces readers with writing so vivid, lucid, and suspenseful that complex science becomes thrilling

adult

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