Description

From Pulitzer Prizewinning and 1 New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene The Song of The Cell is the third book in this extraordinary writers exploration of what it means to be humanrich with Siddhartha Mukherjees revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists doctors and all the patients whose lives may be saved by their workIn 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 selfcontained selfregulating units Our organs our physiology our selveshearts blood brainsare built from these compartments Hooke christens them cellsThe discovery of cellsand the reframing of the human body as a cellular ecosystemannounced the birth of a new kind of medicine based on the therapeutic manipulations of cells A hip fracture a cardiac arrest Alzheimers dementia AIDS pneumonia lung cancer kidney failure arthritis COVIDall could be viewed as the results of cells or systems of cells functioning abnormally And all could be perceived as loci of cellular therapiesIn The Song of the Cell Mukherjee tells the story of how scientists discovered cells began to understand them and are now using that knowledge to create new humans He seduces readers with writing so vivid lucid and suspenseful that complex science becomes thrilling Told in six parts laced with Mukherjees own experience as a researcher doctor and prolific reader The Song of the Cell is both panoramic and intimatea masterpiece