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Across the Bridge
Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates
Henry Gee
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Our understanding of vertebrate origins and the backbone of human history evolves with each new fossil find and DNA map. Many species have now had their genomes sequenced, and molecular techniques allow genetic inspection of even non-model organisms. But as longtime Nature editor Henry Gee argues in Across the Bridge, despite these giant strides and our deepening understanding of how vertebrates fit into the tree of life, the morphological chasm between vertebrates and invertebrates remains vast and enigmatic.

As Gee shows, even as scientific advances have falsified a variety of theories linking these groups, the extant relatives of vertebrates are too few for effective genetic analysis. Moreover, the more we learn about the species that do remain—from sea-squirts to starfish—the clearer it becomes that they are too far evolved along their own courses to be of much use in reconstructing what the latest invertebrate ancestors of vertebrates looked like. Fossils present yet further problems of interpretation. Tracing both the fast-changing science that has helped illuminate the intricacies of vertebrate evolution as well as the limits of that science, Across the Bridge helps us to see how far the field has come in crossing the invertebrate-to-vertebrate divide—and how far we still have to go.
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Albertus Magnus On Animals V1 2
A Medieval Summa Zoologica Revised Edition
Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr.and Irven Michael Resnick
The Ohio State University Press, 2018
Albertus Magnus has long been recognized as one of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages; his contemporaries conferred upon him the title Doctor Universalis. An epitaph at his tomb described him as prince among philosophers, greater than Plato, and hardly inferior to King Solomon in wisdom. In 1941, Pope Pius XII named Albertus Magnus patron saint of scientists.
In his work De animalibus, Albert integrated the vast amount of information on nature that had come down to him in previous centuries: the exposition of Michael Scotus’s translation from the Arabic of Aristotle’s books on the natural world (Books 1–19), Albert’s own revisions to Aristotle’s teachings (Books 20–21), and a “dictionary” of animals appropriated largely from the De natura rerum of Thomas of Cantimpré (Books 22–26). Albert’s comprehensive treatise on living things was acknowledged as the reputable authority in biology for almost five hundred years.
In this translated and annotated edition, Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick illuminate the importance of this work, allowing Albert’s magnum opus to be better understood and more widely appreciated than ever before. Broken into two volumes (Books 1–10 and 11–26),Albertus Magnus On Animals is a veritable medieval scientific encyclopedia, ranging in topics from medicine, embryology, and comparative anatomy to women, hunting and everyday life, commerce, and much more—an essential work for historians, medievalists, scientists, and philosophers alike.      
 
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Animal Personalities
Behavior, Physiology, and Evolution
Edited by Claudio Carere and Dario Maestripieri
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Ask anyone who has owned a pet and they’ll assure you that, yes, animals have personalities. And science is beginning to agree. Researchers have demonstrated that both domesticated and nondomesticated animals—from invertebrates to monkeys and apes—behave in consistently different ways, meeting the criteria for what many define as personality. But why the differences, and how are personalities shaped by genes and environment? How did they evolve? The essays in Animal Personalities reveal that there is much to learn from our furred and feathered friends.
           
The study of animal personality is one of the fastest-growing areas of research in behavioral and evolutionary biology. Here Claudio Carere and Dario Maestripieri, along with a host of scholars from fields as diverse as ecology, genetics, endocrinology, neuroscience, and psychology, provide a comprehensive overview of the current research on animal personality. Grouped into thematic sections, chapters approach the topic with empirical and theoretical material and show that to fully understand why personality exists, we must consider the evolutionary processes that give rise to personality, the ecological correlates of personality differences, and the physiological mechanisms underlying personality variation.
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Autonomic Imbalance and the Hypthalamus
Implications for Physiology, Medicine, Psychology, and Neuropsychiatry
Ernst Gellhorn
University of Minnesota Press, 1957
Autonomic Imbalance and the Hypothalamus was first published in 1957.Fundamental alterations in the reactivity of autonomically innervated structures frequently have been observed in physiological tests as well as under clinical conditions. However, the mechanism of these alterations and the changes in the reactivity of the central structures of the autonomic nervous system that are their most frequent site of action had not been subjected to systematic, experimental analysis until Dr. Gellhorn launched the investigations he reports in this volume.The influence of the sino-aortic reflexes on the hypothalamus and the cortex is analyzed experimentally, and new data on the relation of the hypothalamus to vascular, respiratory, and visceral functions are presented. On the basis of his physiological work Dr. Gellhorn shows how clinically applicable methods for the diagnosis of parasympathetic and sympathetic disorders at the hypothalamic level may be devised. He shows the significance of his observations for an understanding of the physiology of the emotions and suggests clinical applications to such problems as hypertension, central autonomic disorders, and functional psychoses. The influence of age on parasympathetic and sympathetic excitability is shown on control subjects and on neuropsychiatric patients, and significant differences between these two groups at similar age levels are disclosed.For the convenience of the clinical reader the experimental results are summarized in a special section before the clinical applications are discussed.
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Biliary Atresia
The Japanese Experience
D. M. Hays and Ken Kimura
Harvard University Press, 1980

Congenital absence or closure of the bile ducts, biliary atresia, is a disease state of unknown etiology, controversial definition, and, until recently, no effective therapy. It is a condition of newborns, most commonly female newborns, and Western methods of treatment have achieved a survival rate no greater than seven percent.

Daniel Hays and Ken Kimura now make available a comprehensive study of radical methods developed in japan which have achieved dramatically more encouraging results over the last twenty-five years. Western and Japanese approaches are compared and contrasted with respect to differential diagnosis, methods of classification, surgical technique, results, complications, and long-range survival. The largely skeptical attitudes of Western surgeons are also examined with revealing insight. While the writing is always temperate, the facts themselves argue most eloquently for a closer appraisal of this option for treating an otherwise fatal disease.

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Brownsville, Brooklyn
Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto
Wendell E. Pritchett
University of Chicago Press, 2001
From its founding in the late 1800s through the 1950s, Brownsville, a section of eastern Brooklyn, was a white, predominantly Jewish, working-class neighborhood. The famous New York district nurtured the aspirations of thousands of upwardly mobile Americans while the infamous gangsters of Murder, Incorporated controlled its streets. But during the 1960s, Brownsville was stigmatized as a black and Latino ghetto, a neighborhood with one of the city's highest crime rates. Home to the largest concentration of public housing units in the city, Brownsville came to be viewed as emblematic of urban decline. And yet, at the same time, the neighborhood still supported a wide variety of grass-roots movements for social change.

The story of these two different, but in many ways similar, Brownsvilles is compellingly told in this probing new work. Focusing on the interaction of Brownsville residents with New York's political and institutional elites, Wendell Pritchett shows how the profound economic and social changes of post-World War II America affected the area. He covers a number of pivotal episodes in Brownsville's history as well: the rise and fall of interracial organizations, the struggles to deal with deteriorating housing, and the battles over local schools that culminated in the famous 1968 Teachers Strike. Far from just a cautionary tale of failed policies and institutional neglect, the story of Brownsville's transformation, he finds, is one of mutual struggle and frustrated cooperation among whites, blacks, and Latinos.

Ultimately, Brownsville, Brooklyn reminds us how working-class neighborhoods have played, and continue to play, a central role in American history. It is a story that needs to be read by all those concerned with the many challenges facing America's cities today.
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Chemical Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology of Extracellular Fluid
A Lecture Sylabus, 6th edition
James L. Gamble
Harvard University Press

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The Clocks That Time Us
Physiology of the Circadian Timing System
Martin C. Moore-Ede, Frank M. Sulzman, and Charles A. Fuller
Harvard University Press, 1982

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Diatoms to Dinosaurs
The Size And Scale Of Living Things
Chris McGowan
Island Press, 1994

In Diatoms to Dinosaurs, Chris McGowan takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the natural world, and examines life in all its various forms. He imparts the excitement of discovery and the joy of understanding as he demonstrates the central importance of size and scale to the survival of living organisms.

McGowan investigates a wide range of size-related phenomena, from the gliding mechanism of diatoms to blood pressure problems of dinosaurs. Questions asked -- and answered -- include:

  • Will we ever see giant insects the size of pterodactyls?
  • Why are ants so much stronger relative to body size than elephants?
  • What do a clam, a condor, a tortoise, and a sturgeon have in common?
  • How did the skeleton of a 28-ton Apatosaurus support its weight?
  • How can blood get from the heart to the head of a giraffe without rupturing blood vessels?
The author explicates the scientific concepts -- both physical and biological -- needed to inform the relevant phenomena: area/volume relations, metabolism and other basic physiology, kinetic energy, inertial forces, the biology of senescence, boundary layers, and Reynolds numbers. Numerous illustrations scattered throughout the text make the biophysical principles easily comprehensible to readers, regardless of their scientific sophistication.
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Echolocation in Bats and Dolphins
Edited by Jeanette A. Thomas, Cynthia F. Moss, and Marianne Vater
University of Chicago Press, 2003
Although bats and dolphins live in very different environments, are vastly different in size, and hunt different kinds of prey, both groups have evolved similar sonar systems, known as echolocation, to locate food and navigate the skies and seas. While much research has been conducted over the past thirty years on echolocation in bats and dolphins, this volume is the first to compare what is known about echolocation in each group, to point out what information is missing, and to identify future areas of research.

Echolocation in Bats and Dolphins consists of six sections: mechanisms of echolocation signal production; the anatomy and physiology of signal reception and interpretation; performance and cognition; ecological and evolutionary aspects of echolocation mammals; theoretical and methodological topics; and possible echolocation capabilities in other mammals, including shrews, seals, and baleen whales. Animal behaviorists, ecologists, physiologists, and both scientists and engineers who work in the field of bioacoustics will benefit from this book.

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Engineering Animals
How Life Works
Mark Denny and Alan McFadzean
Harvard University Press, 2011

The alarm calls of birds make them difficult for predators to locate, while the howl of wolves and the croak of bullfrogs are designed to carry across long distances. From an engineer's perspective, how do such specialized adaptations among living things really work? And how does physics constrain evolution, channeling it in particular directions?

Writing with wit and a richly informed sense of wonder, Denny and McFadzean offer an expert look at animals as works of engineering, each exquisitely adapted to a specific manner of survival, whether that means spinning webs or flying across continents or hunting in the dark-or writing books. This particular book, containing more than a hundred illustrations, conveys clearly, for engineers and nonengineers alike, the physical principles underlying animal structure and behavior.

Pigeons, for instance-when understood as marvels of engineering-are flying remote sensors: they have wideband acoustical receivers, hi-res optics, magnetic sensing, and celestial navigation. Albatrosses expend little energy while traveling across vast southern oceans, by exploiting a technique known to glider pilots as dynamic soaring. Among insects, one species of fly can locate the source of a sound precisely, even though the fly itself is much smaller than the wavelength of the sound it hears. And that big-brained, upright Great Ape? Evolution has equipped us to figure out an important fact about the natural world: that there is more to life than engineering, but no life at all without it.

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Environmental Physiology of the Amphibians
Edited by Martin E. Feder and Warren W. Burggren
University of Chicago Press, 1992
Through its emphasis on recent research, its many summary tables, and its bibliography of more than 4,000 entries, this first modern, synthetic treatment of comparative amphibian environmental physiology emerges as the definitive reference for the field. Forty internationally respected experts review the primary data, examine current research trends, and identify productive avenues for future research.

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Evaluation Of Joint Motion
Methods of Measurement and Recording
Dortha Esch
University of Minnesota Press, 1974

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Experimental Leukemia and Mammary Cancer
Induction, Prevention, Cure
Charles Brenton Huggins
University of Chicago Press, 1979
Charles Brenton Huggins won the Nobel prize in 1966 for his extensive work in cancer research. He has spent fifty years at the laboratory bench exploring the nature of this disease in an attempt to understand and control it. In this volume, based almost exclusively on experiments conducted over the past twenty years at the University of Chicago, is both the record of Huggins's own research and, in Huggins's words, "a do-it-yourself guide for cancer research workers." Written simply and clearly so that the experiments can be easily reproduced, the book presents Huggins's experiments in the induction of breast cancer and leukemia in rodents. It also describes the methods he discovered to prevent cancer and to cure many of the cancers he has been able to induce. Although most of the material concerns breast cancer and leukemia, research on other kinds of tumors is also described.
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The Extended Organism
The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures
J. Scott Turner
Harvard University Press, 2000
Can the structures that animals build--from the humble burrows of earthworms to towering termite mounds to the Great Barrier Reef--be said to live? However counterintuitive the idea might first seem, physiological ecologist Scott Turner demonstrates in this book that many animals construct and use structures to harness and control the flow of energy from their environment to their own advantage. Building on Richard Dawkins's classic, The Extended Phenotype, Turner shows why drawing the boundary of an organism's physiology at the skin of the animal is arbitrary. Since the structures animals build undoubtedly do physiological work, capturing and channeling chemical and physical energy, Turner argues that such structures are more properly regarded not as frozen behaviors but as external organs of physiology and even extensions of the animal's phenotype. By challenging dearly held assumptions, a fascinating new view of the living world is opened to us, with implications for our understanding of physiology, the environment, and the remarkable structures animals build.
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Feminism and the Biological Body
Birke, Lynda
Rutgers University Press, 2000

What is a body? What are our perceptions of our inner bodies? How are these perceptions influenced?

In recent years, thinking about the body has become highly fashionable. However, the renewed focus, while certainly welcome, seems to always end at the corporeal surface. While recent sociological and feminist theory has made important claims about the process of cultural inscription on the body, and about the cultural representation of the body, what actually appears in this new theory seems to be, ironically, disembodied. If this newly theorized form has interiority, it is one that is explained predominantly through psychoanalysis. The physiological processes remain a mystery to be explained, if at all, only in the esoteric language of biomedicine.

As a trained biologist, Lynda Birke was frustrated by the gap between feminist cultural analysis and her own scientific background. In this book, she seeks to bridge this gap using ideas in anatomy and physiology to develop the feminist view that the biological body is socially and culturally constructed. Birke rejects the assumption that bodily function is somehow fixed and unchanging, claiming that biology offers more than just a deterministic narrative of how nature works. Feminism and the Biological Body brings natural science and feminist theory together and suggests that we need a new politics that includes, rather than denies, our flesh.

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First in Fly
Drosophila Research and Biological Discovery
Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr
Harvard University Press, 2018

A single species of fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has been the subject of scientific research for more than one hundred years. Why does this tiny insect merit such intense scrutiny?

Drosophila’s importance as a research organism began with its short life cycle, ability to reproduce in large numbers, and easy-to-see mutant phenotypes. Over time, laboratory investigation revealed surprising similarities between flies and other animals at the level of genes, gene networks, cell interactions, physiology, immunity, and behavior. Like humans, flies learn and remember, fight microbial infection, and slow down as they age. Scientists use Drosophila to investigate complex biological activities in a simple but intact living system. Fly research provides answers to some of the most challenging questions in biology and biomedicine, including how cells transmit signals and form ordered structures, how we can interpret the wealth of human genome data now available, and how we can develop effective treatments for cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Written by a leader in the Drosophila research community, First in Fly celebrates key insights uncovered by investigators using this model organism. Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr draws on these “first in fly” findings to introduce fundamental biological concepts gained over the last century and explore how research in the common fruit fly has expanded our understanding of human health and disease.

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Fishy Business
Rik Scarce
Temple University Press, 2000
Leaping waterfalls, struggling through rocky shallows, only the strongest salmon survive to spawn a new generation. These remarkable fish seem to be pure nature, unfathomable, all instinct. But are they? For more than a century biologists have tried to unlock the mystery of salmon we know. For sociologist Rik Scarce, salmon represent an opportunity to probe the relationship of science, society, and nature.

About Pacific salmon -- a game fish and food source that is protected and manages for economic and environmental  abundance -- Scarce writes, "What other living thing receives such extensive attention from science and society, is used in so many ways, yet retains so much of what we would like  to think is its 'wild' character?" He shows how political, bureaucratic, and economic forces have directed salmon science for their own purposes and how control remains a central feature in salmon biology.

Identifying a countertrend rooted in environmental activism, Scarce also argues that an ecocentric perspective is gaining ground even as pressures mount simultaneously to save endangered salmon populations and to bring every last salmon to market. Thus, while external forces control much of the biologists' work, a movement is underway to free biology from political and economic pressures. In rich, ethnographic detail, Scarce develops this portrait of a science struggling with nature and itself. The old-line "fisheries biologists" tell how they work under immense pressure to unravel the unknowns of salmon existence to fulfill objectives of politically-motivated funding agencies. In contrast, the new breed of "conservation biology" researchers struggles to maintain the genetic diversity of salmon populations while minimizing the ways humans determine the fate of the salmon.

Fishy Business provides new ways for regarding about human interactions with other species, from appealing ones like wolves, whales, and redwood tress to less popular ones like snail darters and kangaroo rats. Society struggles to decide what parts of nature matter and why. Ultimately, Scarce argues, nature is a social product: what shall we make of it?
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The Fragile Wisdom
An Evolutionary View on Women’s Biology and Health
Grazyna Jasienska
Harvard University Press, 2013

So many women who do everything right to stay healthy still wind up with breast cancer, heart disease, or osteoporosis. In The Fragile Wisdom, Grazyna Jasienska provides an evolutionary perspective on the puzzle of why disease prevention among women is so frustratingly difficult. Modern women, she shows, are the unlucky victims of their own bodies’ conflict of interest between reproductive fitness and life-long health.

The crux of the problem is that women’s physiology has evolved to facilitate reproduction, not to reduce disease risk. Any trait—no matter how detrimental to health in the post-reproductive period—is more likely to be preserved in the next generation if it increases the chance of giving birth to offspring who will themselves survive to reproductive age. To take just one example, genes that produce high levels of estrogen are a boon to fertility, even as they raise the risk of breast cancer in mothers and their daughters.

Jasienska argues that a mismatch between modern lifestyles and the Stone Age physiology that evolution has bequeathed to every woman exacerbates health problems. She looks at women’s mechanisms for coping with genetic inheritance and at the impact of environment on health. Warning against the false hope gene therapy inspires, Jasienska makes a compelling case that our only avenue to a healthy life is prevention programs informed by evolutionary understanding and custom-fitted to each woman’s developmental and reproductive history.

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Functional Vertebrate Morphology
Milton Hildebrand
Harvard University Press, 1985

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The Gestation of German Biology
Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling
John H. Zammito
University of Chicago Press, 2017
The emergence of biology as a distinct science in the eighteenth century has long been a subject of scholarly controversy. Michel Foucault, on the one hand, argued that its appearance only after 1800 represented a fundamental rupture with the natural history that preceded it, marking the beginnings of modernity. Ernst Mayr, on the other hand, insisted that even the word "biology" was unclear in its meaning as late as 1800, and that the field itself was essentially prospective well into the 1800s.
 
In The Gestation of German Biology, historian of ideas John Zammito presents a different version of the emergence of the field, one that takes on both Foucault and Mayr and emphasizes the scientific progress throughout the eighteenth century that led to the recognition of the need for a special science. The embrace of the term biology around 1800, Zammito shows, was the culmination of a convergence between natural history and human physiology that led to the development of comparative physiology and morphology—the foundations of biology. Magisterial in scope, Zammito’s book offers nothing less than a revisionist history of the field, with which anyone interested in the origins of biology will have to contend.
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Higher and Colder
A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration
Vanessa Heggie
University of Chicago Press, 2019
During the long twentieth century, explorers went in unprecedented numbers to the hottest, coldest, and highest points on the globe. Taking us from the Himalaya to Antarctica and beyond, Higher and Colder presents the first history of extreme physiology, the study of the human body at its physical limits. Each chapter explores a seminal question in the history of science, while also showing how the apparently exotic locations and experiments contributed to broader political and social shifts in twentieth-century scientific thinking.
 
Unlike most books on modern biomedicine, Higher and Colder focuses on fieldwork, expeditions, and exploration, and in doing so provides a welcome alternative to laboratory-dominated accounts of the history of modern life sciences. Though centered on male-dominated practices—science and exploration—it recovers the stories of women’s contributions that were sometimes accidentally, and sometimes deliberately, erased. Engaging and provocative, this book is a history of the scientists and physiologists who face challenges that are physically demanding, frequently dangerous, and sometimes fatal, in the interest of advancing modern science and pushing the boundaries of human ability.
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The Hot-Blooded Insects
Strategies and Mechanisms of Thermoregulation
Bernd Heinrich
Harvard University Press, 1993

Bernd Heinrich's widely praised Bumblebee Economics set a high standard for scientifically accurate yet gracefully articulate writing about nature's ingenious patterns, specifically thermoregulation. Hot-Blooded Insects takes a giant step forward by presenting an overview of what is now known about thermoregulation in all of the major insect groups, offering new insights on physiology, ecology, and evolution.

The book is richly illustrated by the author's exquisite sketches. By describing the environmental opportunities and challenges faced by moths and butterflies, grasshoppers and locusts, dungball rollers and other beetles, a wide range of bees, and other insects, Heinrich explains their dazzling variety of physiological and behavioral adaptations to what, for them, is a world of violent extremes of temperature. These mechanisms are apparent only through precise observations, but the small body size of insects poses large technical difficulties in whole-animal experiments, engendering controversy about the reliability of the data thus derived. Emphasizing an experimental approach, Heinrich pinpoints where he believes studies have gone astray, describing in detail both groundbreaking experiments and those which leave a reasonable doubt about the mechanism being interpreted. He reviews relevant work on the major taxa to show the underlying patterns that draw diversity together, opines on current controversies, and identifies questions that call for further study.

Physiologists, ecologists, entomologists, and zoologists—in fact, all biologists—will be stimulated and challenged to further research by this masterly synthesis of a new field; it will also appeal to informed readers interested in general science.

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How Fat Works
Philip A. Wood
Harvard University Press, 2006
An experimental pathologist and molecular geneticist, Philip Wood uses gene-knockout technology to study the way mouse genes regulate the metabolism of fat—research that provides insights into the workings of fatty-acid metabolism in humans and what can happen when that metabolic balance goes awry. Based on the classes he regularly teaches to first- and second-year medical students, Wood's book reviews the individual and public health burden of obesity and clarifies often-used, but often inadequately explained, terms employed in the continuing cultural and scientific debate about excess fat. He explains the role of fat in the healthy body, how fat is made, stored, and burned, and demonstrates how excess fat can lead to an array of metabolic disorders and diseases, from hypercholesterolemia and insulin resistance to diabetes. He reviews what recent research can tell us about specific genes or groups of genes that can lead to specific metabolic disorders. He explains the science behind common weight-loss regimens and why those regimens might succeed or fail, and reviews the complex interplay of hormones, genes, and stress in the way our bodies deal with fat through the life cycle. How Fat Works is a concise, clear, and up-to-date primer on the workings of fat, and essential reading for professionals entering careers in medicine and public health administration or anyone wanting a better understanding of one of our most urgent health crises.
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How Primates Eat
A Synthesis of Nutritional Ecology across a Mammal Order
Edited by Joanna E. Lambert, Margaret A. H. Bryer, and Jessica M. Rothman
University of Chicago Press, 2024
Exploring everything from nutrients to food acquisition and research methods, a comprehensive synthesis of the study of food and feeding in nonhuman primates.
 
What do we mean when we say that a diet is nutritious? Why is it that some animals can get all the energy they need from eating leaves while others would perish on such a diet? Why don’t mountain gorillas eat fruit all day like chimpanzees do? Answers to these questions about food and feeding are among the many tasty morsels that emerge from this authoritative book. Informed by the latest scientific tools and millions of hours of field and laboratory work on species across the primate order and around the globe, this volume is an exhaustive synthesis of our understanding of what, why, and how primates eat what they eat. State-of-the-art information presented at physiological, behavioral, ecological, and evolutionary scales will serve as a road map for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners as they work toward a holistic understanding of life as a primate and the urgent conservation consequences of diet and food availability in a changing world.
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The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe
Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War
Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers
University of Chicago Press, 2018
The injuries suffered by soldiers during WWI were as varied as they were brutal. How could the human body suffer and often absorb such disparate traumas? Why might the same wound lead one soldier to die but allow another to recover?
 
In The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe, Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers uncover a fascinating story of how medical scientists came to conceptualize the body as an integrated yet brittle whole. Responding to the harrowing experience of the Great War, the medical community sought conceptual frameworks to understand bodily shock, brain injury, and the vast differences in patient responses they occasioned. Geroulanos and Meyers carefully trace how this emerging constellation of ideas became essential for thinking about integration, individuality, fragility, and collapse far beyond medicine: in fields as diverse as anthropology, political economy, psychoanalysis, and cybernetics.
 
Moving effortlessly between the history of medicine and intellectual history, The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe is an intriguing look into the conceptual underpinnings of the world the Great War ushered in. 
 
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Human Fertility
Henri Leridon
University of Chicago Press, 1977
In this innovative and comprehensive work, expanded by one-third for the English-language edition, Henri Leridon integrates biology and demography to investigate human fertility, both natural and controlled. Traditionally, demographers have been concerned with birthrates in different populations under varying conditions, while biologists have limited themselves to the study of the reproductive process. Leridon has formulated the first coherent overview of the functioning of the human reproductive system in relation to the external conditions that affect fertility.

The book begins with a readable, authoritative review of human fertility in its natural state. Leridon summarizes and evaluates current knowledge, drawing together rare statistical data on physiological variables as well as demographic treatments of these data. After discussing the classical framework used by demographers, Leridon undertakes a "microdemographic" analysis in which he focuses on the individual and explicates the biological processes through which social, psychological, and economic factors affect fertility. He isolates its components—fecundability, intrauterine mortality, the physiological nonsusceptible period, and sterility—then reviews the composite effect of variation in any one component.

Leridon considers situations of controlled fertility: contraception, abortion, and sterilization. The author also presents valuable new data from his own investigations of varying risks of intrauterine mortality. Finally, he shows how the previous approaches can be complemented by the use of mathematical models.
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The Hungry Fly
A Physiological Study of the Behavior Associated with Feeding
Vincent G. Dethier
Harvard University Press, 1976

Hunger is universal among animals. It has been more thoroughly studied in the black blowfly than virtually any other creature except, possibly, man and the white rat. This book is an exploration of what we mean when we say that an animal is "hungry"; it analyzes the ethological concepts of motivation and drive as tested in extensive and elegant experiments on blowflies. The fly, then, is incidental; concepts and experimental techniques for evaluating them are the main subject.

With a clarity and wit rarely found in scientific prose, the author tells the story of all the research that has been carried out with the blowfly. In so doing, he traces the development of ideas and methods employed in experimental physiology. He illustrates an approach to the study of animal behavior that is based upon analysis of underlying mechanisms.

And yet, there is much to learn about flies from this book. It is the most complete book on blowfly physiology, exclusive of endocrinology; thus entomologists will find it indispensable. Sensory physiologists will discover that it details all the classic and contemporary work on the chemical senses of insects. Behavioral biologists will want it as an analytical case history of feeding behavior. Physiological psychologists will encounter a discussion of familiar problems—solved by quite a different evolutionary approach than the rat's. And the general reader interested in animals will find a readable and entertaining view of one of the most challenging branches of biology. With this book, the blowfly joins the herring gull as one of the most accessible and understandable—and even likeable—of animal species.

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Laryngeal Biomechanics
B. Raymond Fink and Robert J. Demarest
Harvard University Press, 1978

For its size, the larynx is the most complex and versatile mechanical device in the body. In this remarkable book, a distinguished medical illustrator and a world authority on laryngeal biomechanics collaborate to provide both an atlas and a treatise on the behavior of the larynx. In separate chapters, the authors consider the functions of the larynx—as safeguard for the free passage of air, to protect the airway from invasion, as a plug that resists expiration during effort, and as the instrument of speech and song. They replace the traditional view of the larynx as a sphincter with a more accurate model. The laryngeal tissues are seen as folding and unfolding in response to respiratory excursion of the trachea, action of intrinsic and extrinsic laryngeal muscles, the respiratory air current, and the elastic recoil of ligaments, membranes, and articular capsules.

The illustrations include unretouched xrays, halftone sketches, structural drawings, and diagrams; together they present as complete a picture as possible of the larynx in all its various functional states. Innovative and systematic, the work forms the basis for planning radical and reconstructive surgery, quantitative approaches in voice therapy, treatment of laryngospasm in anesthesia without use of relaxants, and design of an artificial larynx.

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The Life Beyond Molecules and Genes
In Search of Harmony between Life and Science
Stephen Rothman
Templeton Press, 2009

What makes us alive? Is it our DNA? Our genetics? Is it our atomic composition that gives us life? Somehow, all of this feels radically dissonant from our everyday experience. In Life Beyond Molecules and Genes, experimental biologist Stephen Rothman makes the bold case that it is, in fact, our adaptive abilities, hewn by evolution, that make us alive. In making this point, he reveals a hidden harmony between science and life as we live it.

The traditionally accepted understanding of adaptive properties (e.g., the abilities to obtain food, avoid predators, procreate) has been that these are actions of living things or traits that they express. Rothman makes the provocative assertion that this foundational element of the modern materialist perspective is entirely backwards. Our adaptive properties do not exist because we are alive, but rather we are alive because they exist. The implications of this assertion turn the theory of evolution by natural selection on its head by revealing that life transcends its material nature.
Students and scholars of the biological sciences as well as those interested in the philosophy of science will find this work both fascinating and challenging, perhaps even controversial. For centuries, the field of biology has focused on the seemingly mundane task of identifying and cataloging life's chemical substances, while ignoring its grand question: "What is it that makes us alive?" With Life beyond Molecules and Genes, perhaps the field will move a bit closer toward an answer.

 

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Life in a Shell
A Physiologist’s View of a Turtle
Donald C. Jackson
Harvard University Press, 2013

Trundling along in essentially the same form for some 220 million years, turtles have seen dinosaurs come and go, mammals emerge, and humankind expand its dominion. Is it any wonder the persistent reptile bested the hare? In this engaging book physiologist Donald Jackson shares a lifetime of observation of this curious creature, allowing us a look under the shell of an animal at once so familiar and so strange.

Here we discover how the turtle’s proverbial slowness helps it survive a long, cold winter under ice. How the shell not only serves as a protective home but also influences such essential functions as buoyancy control, breathing, and surviving remarkably long periods without oxygen, and how many other physiological features help define this unique animal. Jackson offers insight into what exactly it’s like to live inside a shell—to carry the heavy carapace on land and in water, to breathe without an expandable ribcage, to have sex with all that body armor intervening.

Along the way we also learn something about the process of scientific discovery—how the answer to one question leads to new questions, how a chance observation can change the direction of study, and above all how new research always builds on the previous work of others. A clear and informative exposition of physiological concepts using the turtle as a model organism, the book is as interesting for what it tells us about scientific investigation as it is for its deep and detailed understanding of how the enduring turtle “works.”

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Men
Evolutionary and Life History
Richard G. Bribiescas
Harvard University Press, 2008

Males account for roughly 50 percent of the global population, but in America and other places, they account for over 85 percent of violent crime. A graph of relative risk of death in human males shows that mortality is high immediately following birth, falls during childhood, then exhibits a distinct rise between the ages of 15 and 35—primarily the result of accidents, violence, and risky behaviors. Why? What compels males to drive fast, act violently, and behave stupidly? Why are men's lives so different from those of women?

Men presents a new approach to understanding the human male by drawing upon life history and evolutionary theory. Because life history theory focuses on the timing of, and energetic investment in, particular aspects of physiology, such as growth and reproduction, Richard Bribiescas and his fellow anthropologists are now using it in the study of humans. This has led to an increased understanding of human female physiology—especially growth and reproduction—from an evolutionary and life history perspective. However, little attention has been directed toward these characteristics in males. Men provides a new understanding of human male physiology and applies it to contemporary health issues such as prostate cancer, testosterone replacement therapy, and the development of a male contraceptive.

Men proves that understanding human physiology requires global research in traditionally overlooked areas and that evolutionary and life history theory have much to offer toward this endeavor.

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On Temperaments. On Non-Uniform Distemperment. The Soul’s Traits Depend on Bodily Temperament
Galen
Harvard University Press, 2020

Antiquity’s most prolific and influential medical writer and practitioner.

Galen of Pergamum (129–?199/216), physician to the court of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, was a philosopher, scientist, medical historian, theoretician, and practitioner who wrote forcefully and prolifically on an astonishing range of subjects and whose impact on later eras rivaled that of Aristotle. Galen synthesized the entirety of Greek medicine as a basis for his own doctrines and practice, which comprehensively embraced theory, practical knowledge, experiment, logic, and a deep understanding of human life and society.

This volume presents three works of the greatest importance to Galen’s theory and practice of medicine. On Temperaments sets out Galen’s concept of the combination (krasis) of the four elemental qualities (hot, cold, wet, and dry), which is fundamental to his account of the structure and function of the human body and of animal and plant bodies generally, and is in turn essential to his theory of medical practice. The two related works, On Non-Uniform Distemperment and The Soul’s Traits Depend on Bodily Temperament, deal with specific aspects of dyskrasia, which is a disturbance in the combination of these qualities. Appended are two related short treatises, On the Best Constitution of Our Body and On Good Bodily State.

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Our Intelligent Bodies
Gary F. Merrill
Rutgers University Press, 2020
Human intelligence isn’t just located in the brain. Our bodies are marvelously sophisticated and complex, with a variety of autonomic systems that help maintain our health without us ever having to think about them. But how exactly do all these physiological structures actually work?
 
In Our Intelligent Bodies, physiology professor Gary F. Merrill takes you on a guided tour through the human body. You’ll learn how our eyes are designed to detect unimaginably small bursts of light and how our ears contain bundles of tiny hairs, each one attuned to different sound frequencies. You’ll also discover how our hearts are smart enough to compensate for skipped beats and irregular rhythms and how our pulmonary system adjusts for low oxygen levels. You’ll even find out why the gut is sometimes called the “second brain,” its reflexes controlled by millions of neurons.   
 
Written in a fun, easy-to-comprehend style and filled with illuminating analogies, Our Intelligent Bodies also brings readers up to date on cutting-edge research into the wonders of human physiology. It will give you a new appreciation for the smart decisions our bodies are making when our brains aren’t paying attention.
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Our Marvelous Bodies
An Introduction to the Physiology of Human Health
Merrill, Gary F
Rutgers University Press, 2008

Our Marvelous Bodies offers a unique perspective on the structure, function, and care of the major systems of the human body. Unlike other texts that use a strictly scientific approach, physiologist Gary F. Merrill relays medical facts alongside personal stories that help students relate to and apply the information.

Readers learn the basics of feedback control systems, homeostasis, and physiological gradients. These principles apply to an understanding of the body’s functioning under optimal, healthy conditions, and they provide insight into states of acute and chronic illness. Separate chapters are devoted to each of the body’s systems in detail: nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, reproductive, and immune. Through a series of real-life examples, the book also shows the importance of maintaining careful medical records for health care professionals, scientists, and patients alike.

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The Pancreas
Biology and Physiology
John A. Williams
Michigan Publishing Services, 2021

This book provides comprehensive and definitive coverage of the current understanding of the structure and function of the exocrine pancreas. While emphasis is on normal physiology, the relevant cell biological, developmental and biochemical information is also provided. Where appropriate, chapters also include material on functional changes in pancreatitis. All chapters are fully referenced and provide up to date information.

The book has been overseen and published by the American Pancreatic Association with Fred S. Gorelick and John A. Williams as Editors. It includes 26 chapters written by an international group of authorities; completed chapters are also presented in open access format on the Pancreapedia (www.pancreapedia.org). The book contains full-color images and summary diagrams that enhance readability and extend the detail provided in the text.

The Pancreas: Biology and Physiology is divided into four sections:

  • Pancreatic Exocrine Structure and Function Anatomy, Bioenergetics, Cytoskeleton, Intracellular Signaling
  • Acinar Cells Digestive enzyme synthesis, intracellular transport, Zymogen granules, Exocytosis
  • Exocrine Pancreas Integrative Responses Hormonal and Neural Control of Protein and Fluid Secretion, Molecular mechanisms of fluid and bicarbonate secretion, regulation of growth and regeneration
  • Pancreatic Islet and Stellate Cell Structure and Function Structure and vasculature of islets, regulation of islet secretion, Stellate Cells in health and disease

The book is designed to be a reference book for pancreas researchers but its clear and readable text will appeal to teachers, students and all individuals interested in the exocrine pancreas.

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Petersburg
The Physiology of a City
Thomas Gaiton Marullo
Northwestern University Press, 2009
This landmark collection of short works forms a vivid documentary of life in midnineteenth-century St. Petersburg. Editor Nikolai Nekrasov was the most influential literary entrepreneur of the day, and he assembled works ranging from ethnography to fiction to literary criticism, all written by leading authors and thinkers of the time. The book he edited represents many important strands in Russian culture and history, including the development of Russian prose and the rise of the intelligentsia. A vital political document as well, Petersburg is a record of—and served as a spur to—the changes in Russian society that culminated in the 1917 revolution. This first-ever English edition brings its storied and studied illumination to a new audience, providing a key to understanding the place that St. Petersburg holds in Russia’s identity.
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Physiological Foundations of Neurology and Psychiatry
Ernst Gellhorn
University of Minnesota Press, 1953
Physiological Foundations of Neurology and Psychiatry was first published in 1953.The findings of Dr. Gellhorn’s extensive and significant research on the physiology of the central nervous system form the basis of the discussion in this volume. Reference is frequently made to the applicability of this laboratory experience to clinical as well as other fields. An attempt has been made to integrate the clinical and experimental literature with the discussion, to give an up-to-date picture of the problems involved and to indicate the possibilities for future investigation. Topics of interest to physiologists, endocrinologists, internists, neurologists and neurosurgeons, psychiatrists, and clinical psychologists are discussed.An important aspect of the author’s work concerned certain recent tests which show an altered reactivity of autonomic centers in the psychotic condition. His interpretation of the significance of these tests for a physiologically oriented therapy of functional psychoses is published here for the first time. The physiological effects actually produced in the central nervous system by “shock” treatment and carbon dioxide therapy are analyzed.Other sections give consideration to some of the principal working mechanisms of the neuron, to the factors determining movements and convulsions, to the pathophysiology of cortical lesions, to some aspects of autonomic physiology, and to the problem of consciousness. An important section deals with integrative functions of the nervous system - those involved in emotion, the conditioning process as the basis of behavior, and homeostasis.
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The Physiology and Pathology of the Cerebellum
Robert S. Dow and Guiseppe Moruzzi
University of Minnesota Press, 1958

The Physiology and Pathology of the Cerebellum was first published in 1958. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The development of electrical methods of recording activity in the nervous system has greatly augmented our knowledge of cerebellar physiology. Now, for the first time in a single volume, this new information has been related to facts derived from older methods of investigation. Previously unpublished reports of experiments conducted at the Institute of Physiology, University of Pisa, Italy, also are included.

The authors, an American clinical neurologist and an Italian neuro-physiologist, have collaborated to provide a comprehensive review of cerebellar physiology and a survey of the clinical symptomatology of cerebellar disorders and the pathology of the cerebellum.

In Part I, devoted to the physiology, the authors review the literature completely and place it in proper relation to the latest developments in this field. There are chapters on this history of cerebellar physiology, ablation experiments, stimulation experiments, electro-physiological experiments, the relations between the cerebellum and other central nervous structures, developmental physiology, and the functions of the cerebellum, considered generally.

Part II is devoted to the human cerebellum as studied in the clinic. Where anatomical and physiological observation may shed light upon obscure clinical findings, the laboratory data are related to the clinical investigations. The disorders and diseases affecting the cerebellum are systemically reviewed. The book is illustrated with 61 halftones and 124 line drawings.

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The Physiology of Hemostasis
Derek Ogston
Harvard University Press, 1983

A leading researcher provides a comprehensive review of the basic physiology of the hemostatic system, offering a solid foundation for understanding the pathological events leading up to thrombosis and abnormal bleeding. An introductory chapter, intended for the nonspecialist, outlines the whole hemostatic process and leads the reader carefully into the detailed information that follows. The first section of the book describes basic components of platelet structure and function, the coagulation system, and fibrinolytic enzyme system. The second is a unique discussion of the changes in these components induced by physiological parameters—hormones, sex, environment, nutrition, stress, and activity.

Derek Ogston performs an invaluable service in reviewing pertinent studies that show both positive and negative results and examining conflicting data and conclusions. His work will be a source of insight and data for practicing hematologists as well as researchers in this rapidly growing field.

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The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses
Faflik, David
Rutgers University Press, 2008
The American boardinghouse once provided basic domestic shelter and constituted a uniquely modern world view for the first true generation of U.S. city-dwellers. Thomas Butler Gunn's classic 1857 account of urban habitation, The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses, explores the process by which boardinghouse life was translated into a lively urban vernacular. Intimate in its confessional tone, comprehensive in its detail, disarmingly penetrating despite (or perhaps because of) its self-deprecating wit, Physiology is at once an essential introduction to a "lost" world of boarding, even as it comprises an early, engaging, and sophisticated analysis of America's "urban turn" during the decades leading up to the Civil War.

In his introduction, David Faflik considers what made Gunn's book a compelling read in the past and how today it can elucidate our understanding of the formation and evolution of urban American life and letters.

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The Physiology of Physical Stress
A Selective Bibliography, 1500–1964
Carleton B. Chapman, M.D. and Elinor C. Reinmiller
Harvard University Press, 1975
More than 2,800 citations indexed by author and by subject comprise this bibliography of studies on the physiology of exercise. Selected from a vast literature on physical stress, the majority of works in this listing concern basic physiology. The emphasis is on studies representing the origin and development of fundamental concepts, although some clinical studies with implications for basic physiology are included. The bibliography includes references from a period, 1500 to 1964, not available through the computerized retrieval system (MEDLARS) of the National Library of Medicine. Most entries were published in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and thus reflect the growth of the field.
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The Physiology of Truth
Neuroscience and Human Knowledge
Jean-Pierre Changeux
Harvard University Press, 2002

In this wide-ranging book, one of the boldest thinkers in modern neuroscience confronts an ancient philosophical problem: can we know the world as it really is?

Drawing on provocative new findings about the psychophysiology of perception and judgment in both human and nonhuman primates, and also on the cultural history of science, Jean-Pierre Changeux makes a powerful case for the reality of scientific progress and argues that it forms the basis for a coherent and universal theory of human rights. On this view, belief in objective knowledge is not a mere ideological slogan or a naïve confusion; it is a characteristic feature of human cognition throughout evolution, and the scientific method its most sophisticated embodiment. Seeking to reconcile science and humanism, Changeux holds that the capacity to recognize truths that are independent of subjective personal experience constitutes the foundation of a human civil society.

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The Politics of Women's Biology
Hubbard, Ruth
Rutgers University Press, 1990
For a range of historical and contemporary issues in eugenics, human evolution, and procreative technology, Ruth Hubbard explains why scientific descriptions and choices should not generalize human, or female, attributes without acknowledging the realities of people's lives. Sophisticated in its analysis, yet not at all technical in its exposition, this book will find a wide readership among feminists, the general public, and the scientific community.
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Principles of Autonomic-Somatic Integrations
Physiological Basis and Psychological and Clinical Implications
Ernst Gellhorn
University of Minnesota Press, 1967
Principles of Autonomic-Somatic Integrations was first published in 1967.For a number of years Dr. Gellhorn, a professor emeritus of neurophysiology at the University of Minnesota, conducted research on various problems stemming from the need for a better understanding of the autonomic nervous system. In this book he continues his contributions on the subject, providing a significant analysis of the relationship between the autonomic and somatic systems and the implications for medicine and psychology of the principles established. The book is based on an extensive review of the international literature, of which more than 1,000 references are cited.Dr. Gellhorn points out that research in the last two decades has shown that hypothalamic and reticular mechanisms play a fundamental role in the regulation of somatic sensory and motor functions as well as visceral functions. The role of such mechanisms in functions that represent fragments of behavior has been studied in great detail, and the importance of the mechanisms in the integration of diverse systems has been emphasized. He now suggests that a few basic principles are involved in the integration of a complex maze of organs and processes and that this integration results in a coherent pattern of total behavior. In the light of these principles he provides a broad physiological interpretation of behavior and explores various clinical implications.The book will be of particular interest to physiologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists.
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Questions concerning Aristotle's On Animals (The Fathers of the Church, Mediaeval Continuation, Volume 9)
Irven M. Albert the Great
Catholic University of America Press, 2008
This text, the Questions concerning Aristotle's On Animals [Quaestiones super de animalibus], recovered only at the beginning of the twentieth century and never before translated in its entirety, represents Conrad of Austria's report on a series of disputed questions that Albert the Great addressed in Cologne ca. 1258.
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Raveling the Brain
Toward a Transdisciplinary Neurorhetoric
Jordynn Jack
The Ohio State University Press, 2019
Humans have always been fascinated by the workings of the mind and now, more than ever, neuroscience has become a popular area of inquiry. While neuroscience advertises itself as an interdisciplinary field, drawing on biology, physics, engineering, and psychology, to date it has engaged less often with the humanities. In this transdisciplinary work, Jordynn Jack aims to show how the humanities—and in particular, rhetoric—have much to add to the neurosciences, offering rich insights into the ways in which the brain is enmeshed in the body, in culture, and in discourse.
Jack first looks at the problem of “neurohype”—exaggerated or oversimplified claims that essentialize brains and make them “uncritically real”—questioning some of the fundamental assumptions about the brain that experimental protocols and psychological concepts rely on. Then, through examples of research on sex and gender, political orientation, and affect, Jack demonstrates how a rhetorical-material approach can help to generate alternative approaches to studying the brain that might mitigate the problem of neurohype. By raveling out the roots of neurohype and raveling back its use through time, Raveling the Brain shows how rhetoric and neuroscience might be raveled together, or intertwined, to create a stronger transdisciplinary approach that might enrich our understanding of those issues of interest to neuroscientists and humanists alike. 
 
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The Retina
An Approachable Part of the Brain, Revised Edition
John E. Dowling
Harvard University Press, 2011

John Dowling’s The Retina, published in 1987, quickly became the most widely recognized introduction to the structure and function of retinal cells. In this Revised Edition, Dowling draws on twenty-five years of new research to produce an interdisciplinary synthesis focused on how retinal function contributes to our understanding of brain mechanisms.

The retina is a part of the brain pushed out into the eye during development. It retains many characteristics of other brain regions and hence has yielded significant insights on brain mechanisms. Visual processing begins there as a result of neuronal interactions in two synaptic layers that initiate an analysis of space, color, and movement. In humans, visual signals from 126 million photoreceptors funnel down to one million ganglion cells that convey at least a dozen representations of a visual scene to higher brain regions.

The Revised Edition calls attention to general principles applicable to all vertebrate retinas, while showing how the visual needs of different animals are reflected in their retinal variations. It includes completely new chapters on color vision and retinal degenerations and genetics, as well as sections on retinal development and visual pigment biochemistry, and presents the latest knowledge and theories on how the retina is organized anatomically, physiologically, and pharmacologically.

The clarity of writing and illustration that made The Retina a book of choice for a quarter century among graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, vision researchers, and teachers of upper-level courses on vision is retained in Dowling’s new easy-to-read Revised Edition.

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Riotous Flesh
Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth-Century America
April R. Haynes
University of Chicago Press, 2015
Nineteenth-century America saw numerous campaigns against masturbation, which was said to cause illness, insanity, and even death. Riotous Flesh explores women’s leadership of those movements, with a specific focus on their rhetorical, social, and political effects, showing how a desire to transform the politics of sex created unexpected alliances between groups that otherwise had very different goals.

As April R. Haynes shows, the crusade against female masturbation was rooted in a generally shared agreement on some major points: that girls and women were as susceptible to masturbation as boys and men; that “self-abuse” was rooted in a lack of sexual information; and that sex education could empower women and girls to master their own bodies. Yet the groups who made this education their goal ranged widely, from “ultra” utopians and nascent feminists to black abolitionists. Riotous Flesh explains how and why diverse women came together to popularize, then institutionalize, the condemnation of masturbation, well before the advent of sexology or the professionalization of medicine.
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The Science of Walking
Investigations into Locomotion in the Long Nineteenth Century
Andreas Mayer
University of Chicago Press, 2020
The Science of Walking recounts the story of the growing interest and investment of Western scholars, physicians, and writers in the scientific study of an activity that seems utterly trivial in its everyday performance yet essential to our human nature: walking. Most people see walking as a natural and unremarkable activity of daily life, yet the mechanism has long puzzled scientists and doctors, who considered it an elusive, recalcitrant, and even mysterious act. In The Science of Walking, Andreas Mayer provides a history of investigations of the human gait that emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines, including physiology, neurology, orthopedic surgery, anthropology, and psychiatry.
 
Looking back at more than a century of locomotion research, Mayer charts, for the first time, the rise of scientific endeavors to control and codify locomotion and analyzes their social, political, and aesthetic ramifications throughout the long nineteenth century. In an engaging narrative that weaves together science and history, Mayer sets the work of the most important representatives of the physiology of locomotion—including Wilhelm and Eduard Weber and Étienne-Jules Marey—in their proper medical, political, and artistic contexts. In tracing the effects of locomotion studies across other cultural domains, Mayer reframes the history of the science of walking and gives us a deeper understanding of human movement.
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The Sensory Hand
Neural Mechanisms of Somatic Sensation
Vernon B. Mountcastle
Harvard University Press, 2005

The hand is an organ of considerable capability. With it we feel, point, and reach, we determine the texture and shape of objects we palpate, we emit and receive signs of approval, compassion, condolence, and encouragement, and, on a different register, rejection, threat, dislike, antagonism, and attack.

Vernon Mountcastle has devoted his career to studying the neurophysiology of sensation--the extended sensory surface, consisting of skin and subcutaneous tissue--in the hand. In The Sensory Hand Mountcastle provides an astonishingly comprehensive account of the neural underpinnings of the rich and complex tactile experiences evoked by stimulation of the hand. Mountcastle focuses attention on the nerve pathways linking the hand to central neural structures, structures that play a role in several other aspects of somatic sensation. His new book thus becomes a sequel to his earlier volume, Perceptual Neuroscience, in which he offered a detailed analysis of the role of the distributed systems of the neocortex in perception generally.

Written by one of the giants of modern neuroscience and the first single-authored book-length treatment of the subject, The Sensory Hand is a major work of scholarship that will be essential reading for anyone interested in how the brain registers sensation and perception.

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Sex Testing
Gender Policing in Women's Sports
Lindsay Pieper
University of Illinois Press, 2016
In 1968, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) implemented sex testing for female athletes at that year's Games. When it became clear that testing regimes failed to delineate a sex divide, the IOC began to test for gender--a shift that allowed the organization to control the very idea of womanhood.

Ranging from Cold War tensions to gender anxiety to controversies around doping, Lindsay Parks Pieper explores sex testing in sport from the 1930s to the early 2000s. Pieper examines how the IOC in particular insisted on a misguided binary notion of gender that privileged Western norms. Testing evolved into a tool to identify--and eliminate--athletes the IOC deemed too strong, too fast, or too successful. Pieper shows how this system punished gifted women while hindering the development of women's athletics for decades. She also reveals how the flawed notions behind testing--ideas often sexist, racist, or ridiculous--degraded the very idea of female athleticism.

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Sleep and Wakefulness
Nathaniel Kleitman
University of Chicago Press, 1987
For half a century, Sleep and Wakefulness has been a valuable reference work. It discusses phases of the sleep cycle, experimental work on sleep and wakefulness, sleep disorders and their treatment, and such sleep-like states as hypnosis and hibernation.
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Smellosophy
What the Nose Tells the Mind
A. S. Barwich
Harvard University Press, 2020

An NRC Handelsblad Book of the Year

“Offers rich discussions of olfactory perception, the conscious and subconscious impacts of smell on behavior and emotion.”
Science

Decades of cognition research have shown that external stimuli “spark” neural patterns in particular regions of the brain. We think of the brain as a space we can map: here it responds to faces, there it perceives a sensation. But the sense of smell—only recently attracting broader attention in neuroscience—doesn’t work this way. So what does the nose tell the brain, and how does the brain understand it?

A. S. Barwich turned to experts in neuroscience, psychology, chemistry, and perfumery in an effort to understand the mechanics and meaning of odors. She discovered that scents are often fickle, and do not line up with well-defined neural regions. Upending existing theories of perception, Smellosophy offers a new model for understanding how the brain senses and processes odors.

“A beguiling analysis of olfactory experience that is fast becoming a core reference work in the field.”
Irish Times

“Lively, authoritative…Aims to rehabilitate smell’s neglected and marginalized status.”
Wall Street Journal

“This is a special book…It teaches readers a lot about olfaction. It teaches us even more about what philosophy can be.”
Times Literary Supplement

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Smoking and Pregnancy
The Politics of Fetal Protection
Oaks, Laury
Rutgers University Press, 2001

The 1966 edition of the leading medical textbook states that pregnant women can safely smoke half a pack of cigarettes a day. Yet today, women who smoke during pregnancy are among the most vilified figures in public health campaigns. Laury Oaks argues this shift is not due solely to medical findings indicating that cigarette smoking may harm the fetus. Also responsible are a variety of social factors that converged more than a decade ago to construct the demonized category of the “pregnant smoker.”

This book charts the emergence of smoking during pregnancy as a public health concern and social problem. Oaks looks at the emphasis public health educators place on individual responsibility, the current legal and social assertion of fetal personhood, the changing expectations of pregnant and prepregnant women, and the advent of antismoking campaigns. She explores how public health educators discuss “the problem” with one another, how they communicate with pregnant smokers, and how these women themselves understand the “risk” of fetal harm. Finally, Oaks discusses the various meanings of “objective” statistics on the effects of smoking on the fetus, exploring the significance of cultural context in assessing the relative importance of those numbers. She argues that rather than bombarding pregnant women with statistics, health educators should consider the daily lives of these women and their socioeconomic status to understand why some women choose to smoke during pregnancy. Without downplaying the seriousness of the health risks that smoking poses to women and their babies, the book supports new efforts that challenge the moral policing of pregnant smokers.

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The Thermal Warriors
Strategies of Insect Survival
Bernd Heinrich
Harvard University Press, 1996

All bodily activity is the result of the interplay of vastly complex physiological processes, and all of these processes depend on temperature. For insects, the struggle to keep body temperature within a suitable range for activity and competition is often a matter of life and death.

A few studies of temperature regulation in butterflies can be found dating back to the late 1800s, but only recently have scientists begun to study the phenomenon in other insects. In The Thermal Warriors Bernd Heinrich explains how, when, and in general what insects regulate their body temperature and what it means to them. As he shows us, the ingenuity of the survival strategies insects have evolved in the irreducible crucible of temperature is astonishing: from shivering and basking, the construction of turrets (certain tiger beetles), and cooling with liquid feces to stilting (some desert ants and beetles), "panting" in grasshoppers and "sweating cicada," and counter- and alternating-currents of blood flow for heat retention and heat loss.

In The Thermal Warriors Heinrich distills his great reference work, The Hot-Blooded Insects, to its essence: the most significant and fascinating stories that illustrate general principles, all conveyed in the always engaging prose we have come to expect from this author.

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Treatise of Man
René Descartes
Harvard University Press, 1972


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