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 14
... prokaryotic , nonnucleated , microbes . Without bacteria for starters , we would never have had enough oxygen to go around , nor could we have found and fixed the nitrogen for making enzymes , nor could we recycle the solid matter of ...
... prokaryotic , nonnucleated , microbes . Without bacteria for starters , we would never have had enough oxygen to go around , nor could we have found and fixed the nitrogen for making enzymes , nor could we recycle the solid matter of ...
Page 29
... prokaryotes , nonnucleated cells like bacteria , when nu- cleated cells suddenly turned up . Think of the agitated commissions assembled to explain the scandalous prolifera- tion of trilobites all over the place , the mass firings , the ...
... prokaryotes , nonnucleated cells like bacteria , when nu- cleated cells suddenly turned up . Think of the agitated commissions assembled to explain the scandalous prolifera- tion of trilobites all over the place , the mass firings , 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