The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology WatcherA Pulitzer Prize Finalist The medusa is a tiny jellyfish that lives on the ventral surface of a sea slug found in the Bay of Naples. Readers will find themselves caught up in the fate of the medusa and the snail as a metaphor for eternal issues of life and death as Lewis Thomas further extends the exploration of man and his world begun in The Lives of a Cell. Among the treasures in this magnificent book are essays on the human genius for making mistakes, on disease and natural death, on cloning, on warts, and on Montaigne, as well as an assessment of medical science and health care. In these essays and others, Thomas once again conveys his observations of the scientific world in prose marked by wonder and wit. |
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Page 70
... become a successful pathogen . Pa- thogenicity is , in a sense , a highly skilled trade , and only a tiny minority of all the numberless tons of microbes on the earth has ever been involved itself in it ; most bacte- ria are busy with ...
... become a successful pathogen . Pa- thogenicity is , in a sense , a highly skilled trade , and only a tiny minority of all the numberless tons of microbes on the earth has ever been involved itself in it ; most bacte- ria are busy with ...
Page 152
... become a very small memory . Their motion changes . Now , instead of drifting at random through the corridors of the mind , they move in straight lines , turning over and over , searching for other pairs . Docking and locking continue ...
... become a very small memory . Their motion changes . Now , instead of drifting at random through the corridors of the mind , they move in straight lines , turning over and over , searching for other pairs . Docking and locking continue ...
Page 170
... become a healthy species , not all that different from the healthy stocks of domestic plants and animals that we al- ready take for granted . Strokes , and senile dementia , and cancer , and arthritis are not natural aspects of the ...
... become a healthy species , not all that different from the healthy stocks of domestic plants and animals that we al- ready take for granted . Strokes , and senile dementia , and cancer , and arthritis are not natural aspects of the ...
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animal antibiotics anyway arthritis ASPCA bacillus bacteria beavers and otters become begin behavior believe biological biomedical brain cancer cause cells central century cloning committees cortisone course creatures death Delphi diphtheria dying earth East River endotoxin everything exotoxins goldfish Greek happens hard hemocytes hubris human hybrids imagine Indo-European infection kind laboratory language living lobar pneumonia look lymphocytes matter meaning medical school medicine medusa meningitis microbial mind Montaigne mouse nature never notion nudibranch numbers once organisms ourselves pathogens patients Penguin Books penicillin perhaps pond precisely premedical problem question recombinant recombinant DNA response scientists seems semicolon sense side simply single social sort of thing species spirochete sure surface surprise syphilis talk thought tion tissue today's toxin trouble trying tuberculosis turn typhus virus warts whole wonder word worry write to Penguin wrong