The Human Body Close-Up / The Wild Life Of Our Bodies

There is a lot more to learn about your body than what you can see in the mirror. For proof, we offer these two fascinating new books. John Clancy puts the human body under the microscope, sharing extreme close-ups of our anatomy in vivid color photographs. And Rob Dunn suggests that we are compromising our health by maintaining an antiseptic environment that isolates us from the natural world.

The Human Body Close-Up

The beauty of the human body is not limited to what we can discern with the naked eye. The Human Body Close-Up showcases 300 high-magnification color photographs that zoom in on amazing details of the components of our anatomy. The book’s two-page spreads first depict a body part under relatively low magnification and then a portion of that image under higher magnification.

Turn these pages and you will encounter striking depictions of:
• Chromosomes. One micrograph (at 12,000x) depicts the moment right before cell division, with the 46 chromosomes arrayed into X-shaped structures inside the nucleus. Another shot (at 34,000x) shows the four arms of this X shape clearly.
• Connective tissue. A cross-section through the windpipe (trachea) shows a layer of areola connective tissue that joins together two other layers. A more magnified view reveals three types of connective tissue fibers: collagen, elastic and reticulin.
• Veins. Veins carry blood from capillaries and back toward the heart. One image depicts a cross-section of a vein sitting next to thicker-walled artery; a separate photograph shows a section through a pulmonary vein filled with red blood cells.
• The retina. A 4x image shows that this light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye is rich with blood vessels. It’s paired with a 3,500x image spotlighting the rod- and cone-shaped photoreceptor cells that handle low-light and color vision, respectively.
• Oocytes. We see an oocyte—a female egg cell—surrounded by a cloud of cumulus cells, which help to nourish it. Another image shows an oocyte resting against the wall of a fallopian tube on its way to the womb, or uterus.

Graced by John Clancy’s informative text detailing the subject of each image, The Human Body Close-Up reveals the human form—skeleton, muscles, nervous system, immune system, sensory organs and more—from a whole new perspective.

The Wild Life of Our Bodies

Anatomical photographs are striking, but they can’t tell us how their subjects came to be. In The Wild Life of Our Bodies, Rob Dunn proffers a captivating thesis: Human bodies evolved amid a wilderness of parasites, bacteria and predators—and now, having removed ourselves from this wild environment, we are making ourselves sick.

According to Dunn, although there are lots of benefits to “clean living,” a vast range of ailments—from diabetes and autism to allergies, anxiety disorders, autoimmune diseases, and tooth, jaw and vision problems—may stem from the fact that we are no longer in contact with certain microorganisms and wildlife.

For example, it might seem obvious that ridding ourselves of intestinal worms is a positive thing. Yet some research suggests that Crohn’s disease may be caused by the body attacking itself via the same immune mechanisms that originally evolved to battle intestinal parasites. (In one amazing study, 22 of 25 Crohn’s patients who willingly ingested whipworm eggs reported better health.) Dunn goes on to spotlight evidence that the human appendix, far from being useless, served as a “house for bacteria,” a place where beneficial microbes could grow to form biofilms that aid the operation of our intestinal tracts.

Further along, we ponder the possibility that our color vision evolved not to recognized fruit, as some have speculated, but to spot venomous snakes from a greater distance. And why are humans (relatively) hairless? As Dunn shows, this may be linked to the ease with which