Metaphors in Medicine - The Body As A House + Some Sci Fi

Over the course of history, people have used metaphors to explain the new and unknown. Metaphors offer us a point of anchoring when approaching complex or novel issues. By relating something new to something we already know, it becomes easier for us to understand it and make it our own.

The human body has been subject to hundreds of metaphors. In a previous post, I commented on a few anatomic metaphors. In this post, I want to be more general and speak of the human body as a whole. Across history, the body itself and all its systems have been likened to a house, a machine, and, more recently, a plant.

First of all, let's take a look at the human body as a house. Here is possibly one of the earliest, or at least most well-known, representations of this metaphor:

The Polish-Jewish physician Tobias Cohn published a series of eight books called the Ma'aseh Toviyyah (Work of Tobias). Each encyclopedic volume focused on a field of knowledge (Volume One: Theology, Volume Two: Astronomy, Volume Three: Medicine...). In the third volume, Tobias Cohn illustrated the human body side-by-side with a house in order to liken both structures.

The Bible makes several references to the body as the home of the person's essence, the physical place where the soul resides. The body may be mortal, but the soul most certainly is not! Thus, the soul merely occupies a home during its stay on Earth.

To nobody's surprise, works of science fiction have dealt with the subject of body and home. Have you ever heard of superior beings leaving behind their physical bodies and living only through the psyche? This transformation occurs to our hero Dave at the end of his adventure in 2001: A Space Odyssey. While his fate might not be so clear in that novel, subsequent novels leave no place for doubt: Dave, with the help of the superior race, has left behind his mortal body--his home or shell--and become a superior being himself, unrestricted by space and time. This concept is nicely addressed in the book How to Live Forever: Science Fiction and Philosophy by Stephen RL Clark.

While the entire body might be considered a house, what is it a house to? Apart from the "soul," there are many representations of the brain as the center of one's essence. Science fiction, again, has dealt with this and I'm sure most of us are familiar with the brain in a jar scene.

Red Dwarf: Poor Lester has a nasty shock when
he sees his possible future self in a jar.

Essentially, the idea is that if we can transfer the brain from one body to another, moving from one house to another might save us from certain death if the rest of the body fails (the house falls apart).

But what about taking it one step further? The brain is also prone to decay, and it is also part of the physical home of the intangible soul, so what if we leave behind absolutely everything? What if we could upload our memories and our emotions--essentially ourselves--into a digital format and exist in a form of digital immortality?

In an attempt to cheat death, science fiction has postulated that humans can use artificial limbs until the mortal body is completely eradicated. The next step from there would be to discard the artificial bodies and thus the soul, or the psyche or whatever you would like to call it, is free from its home.


Further Reading

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/leaving-the-body-behind-a-history
http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/whatisap/wiap03.pdf
https://neuwritesd.org/2013/10/29/the-science-non-fiction-of-a-bodiless-brain/
http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2015/03/its-a-sci-fi-trope-but-are-beings-of-pure-energy-really-possible/

Review - Rosemary's Baby

You've probably heard of Rosemary's Baby before. The classic 1967 novel by Ira Levin was transformed into the 1968 film by director (let's keep our personal opinions aside for now) Roman Polanski. The movie has 99% on Rotten Tomatoes! The story was also made into a TV miniseries in 2014 with questionable appeal...

I personally haven't seen the movie but I've heard about it and already had a general sense of what the book would be about when a coworker offered to lend me his copy. Personally, I'm glad I didn't know too much beforehand because Rosemary's Baby was a delightfully dark read.

The story begins vanilla enough: Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, recently married, get into the New York City apartment building they've (she's) been longing for: the Bramford. But the Bramford has a dark history of Satanists and cannibals, tee-hee! Even though Hutch, Rosemary's close friend, tries to put her off the building, Rosemary and her husband move in and begin a new life together.


Although not much happens in the first part of the novel, aside from moving in and decorating, meeting the neighbors and encountering a suicide, the matter-of-fact way Levin has of explaining Rosemary and her husband Guy's day-to-day kept me turning page after page. Of course, the action centers around Rosemary, only twenty-four years old and married to up-and-coming actor Guy Woodhouse, who is nine years her senior.

Rosemary initially came off as a naive housewife suffering from too much dependency on her husband. She parted with her religious beliefs and her family ties when she decided to marry Guy. However, as the couple meets their sketchy (and nosy!) neighbors Roman and Minnie Castevet, Rosemary's personality becomes clearer. She's not so much naive as gentle-spirited and uprooted from her natural habitat. This made for an endearing main character, who I could sympathize with up to the final page.

When Rosemary finds out she's pregnant, something she had been yearning for, her surroundings turn a shade darker and now people who seemed to be her trusted neighbors and friends look more like enemies.

In the final third of the novel, Rosemary puts all the pieces of the puzzle together and realizes exactly what is going on around her. She becomes a take-charge type of character, who is still limited by her duty to her husband and her obstetrician (who happens to be in on the entire scheme surrounding her baby).

I don't want to reveal any of the action in this review because the both the novel and the classic film have been talked about to death already, but let me just say that Rosemary's Baby was an excellent thriller--not a horror story. The ending, however, left me wanting more because the story takes a sudden sharp turn into the paranormal and opens up so many fantastic doors which we never get to cross because the novel simply ends. The last scene in the novel made my heart go out to Rosemary and truly demonstrated what a gentle soul she is.

Rosemary's Baby receives five Pirates!

Making Time Sneak Peek

Have a look at the first chapter from my upcoming sci-fantasy novel Making Time!

   The smell of death soon became unbearable. It seeped into every corner of the Heyday, past closed doors, weaving around the walls, the floor, and the furniture until you could taste it, roll it around on your tongue. Rancid. Rusty. Guilty.

   Strangely though, death didn’t come from the corpse hidden in the small bedroom at the end of the hall. No, Tristan Cross’s body wasn’t at fault; it was encased in glass, untouched by the passing of time. A zig-zag of stitches held together his shattered skull.

   He was dead and gone, so the rancid, rusty, guilty flavor that filled the ship with rot and unease couldn’t come from him.

   It’s coming from me.

   Robert stared blankly at the light screen in front of him, his hands cupped around an empty whiskey glass. He’d been sitting there for almost an hour, looking without seeing, still as a rock while his mind buzzed with overlapping thoughts.

   I had the power to stop this from happening. It’s not too late. I can still set things right. But… I’m an idiot. I should stop wasting my time. But I owe it to Time. I have to regain her trust in me. Do I really think I can undo death? Of course I can. It won’t be easy, but I’ll manage. I already told myself that before. And I failed. That time was different. Tristan’s soul is in the Repository. All I have to do is go in there and pull it out.

   “He is dead. Leave him be and move on.”

   The voice jolted Robert. For the first time in the better part of an hour, he scanned his surroundings.    He hadn’t turned on the flaring overheads in the command room, so the only light that shone was the emergency pilot over the door and the dim blue of the screen in front of him.

   Darkness was best for giving a voice to inner thoughts, but this darkness was made up of broken shadows and voices that didn’t belong to Robert. As he watched, a shadow detached itself from the rest. With as much noise as a feather fluttering to the floor, the shadow leapt onto the empty acceleration couch beside him and squatted there, smiling.

   It had no eyes.

   Damned creature. Robert turned away from the specter and reached for the bottle of Green Goose he’d left on the command console.

   “Still not speaking to me, I see.” The creature’s voice rubbed against Robert’s flesh like sandpaper.

   He cast it a sidelong glance while he poured. The specter perched on the armrest like some form of grotesque monkey. Its arms dangled by its sides, almost long enough to graze the floor. A silver thread fell loosely from its mouth. Robert found his eyes following the thread, even though he already knew what was on the other end: himself.

   He and this nightmare had been bound together since the afternoon Tristan died and the pack of specters rushed into the cemetery. Only two had come looking for Robert—a dozen for Eneld. But Eneld had been so shielded in his own shock and grief that he couldn’t see the specters surrounding him while he clutched his dying brother. He couldn’t hear them beckoning, so their ghostly claws slid right off him.

   No, Robert told himself as he sipped the whiskey. That’s not entirely true. Eneld heard some of their promises. He just protected himself better than me.

   That made it all the worse. Why me and not him? Robert ended up with a new companion, a shadow by his side to poke fingers in his mind and dissect his thoughts.

   The specter would die; Robert was sure of that. He would find a way to weaken it until he could pull out the thread without harming himself, and that began by starving it of his attention.

   He tilted back the glass and drank it dry. The muscles in his shoulders loosened.

   The specter clacked its tongue. “I can read your mind, you know.” It cocked its head in a playful gesture. “There is nothing you can hide from me.”

   It was lying, as usual. It could catch a thought floating in the air every now and then, but it was far from reading his mind.

   “Your silence is futile…” it said in a singsong tone. “You will talk to me eventually. And oh, what chit-chat we will have!” It leaned forward. “You should tell the boy some problems cannot be solved. His brother got what he deserved. Now have him go his merry way.”

   The specter paused. Robert glanced at it.

   Two swirls formed on its face until it stared back at Robert through round yellow eyes. “Or you can make sure the boy never bothers you again…” It huffed excitedly and did a little bounce. “He is on Time’s plane as I speak…but he left something behind…”

   Robert frowned. For a moment, he couldn’t understand what the creature was insinuating. It couldn’t be what he suspected.

   The truth was Robert had hidden two bodies on board the Heyday: Tristan, who was dead and frozen in time, and Eneld, who was very much alive and coping with his grief on Time’s plane. Mortal bodies could not travel to higher astral planes, so Eneld had left his behind until the Heyday reached its destination.

   The specter knew an empty body was a helpless body…

   No. No. Robert cut off the thought chain before reaching the final links.

   “Do not ignore me!” The specter growled and before Robert could do anything, it plunged its fist into the light screen. Its claws moved swiftly, scrambling and rearranging several symbols on the display.

   A dull twang echoed across the Heyday, like the hesitant first note of a harp.

   According to the information flashing on the screen, Time once more flowed over Tristan’s body.

   “Master,” the specter muttered as it sat back, “he is nothing more than a corpse. Let him rot. Call it a system malfunction.” It grinned, and Robert caught a glimpse of the endless rows of tiny sharp teeth lining its mouth.

   Clever little bastard, Robert mused as a grim smirk tugged at his lips. He hadn’t expected the shadow to know how to work the commands on the light screen.

   The little trick wouldn’t last, though. For very brief periods—and on very specific targets—Robert had found a way to make time stop, at least until the buildup became too much and time overflowed. Strangely, he’d also discovered that the method worked the other way around: if time had stopped flowing, Robert could awaken small parts of it and create an illusion, at least for a few minutes until the effects fizzled out and died.

   It was a trick that crept along the fringe of the goddess Time herself; something even she hadn’t noticed—yet. It was a trick Robert was still practicing, and he had no intention of showing it to Eneld.

   I’m already teaching him enough.

   But the specter had somehow known. Curiosity burned in Robert, though he wouldn’t quench it by speaking to that beast.

   A blunt, cool claw drew a long chill down the back of Robert’s neck. He swerved toward the specter, ready to beat it for daring to touch him. However, the specter had its back turned. Gripping the couch, it bristled and snarled while it stared into the darkened corridor leading to the bedrooms.

   “Master, we are not alone.”

   Without hesitating, Robert stood and marched down the hall.

   The specter scampered after him. “What are you doing, Master?”

   His footsteps rang with determination.

   “What are you going to do?”

   Robert wanted to wheel around and yell at it to shut up for once, to let him think, to let him hear, to let him feel what the hell had crawled onto his ship. Instead, he bit his tongue and plunged into the shadows of Tristan’s bedroom.

   He stood over Tristan’s transparent casket and stared at his corpse. The faint reflection of the emergency light over the door drew spirals on the glass.

   The corners of Robert’s mouth dropped into a frown. The swirls on the casket played with each other.

   “Come out.” He waited, but nothing happened. He held his hands over the glass. “I order you to come out.”

   It was cold on the Heyday, and Robert could feel heat radiating from his skin. He rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead. He was warm, almost feverish. Not a good sign. “I am Robert the demon master. I order you to abandon this body.”

   A shiver rushed through Tristan’s body, and Robert almost took a step back.

   “Show yourself to me,” he said in a louder voice, his feet firmly grounded.

   A long, thin trail of black smoke rose from Tristan’s mouth.

   The specter next to Robert twitched and hissed. “Master… Did you know he also had a companion?”

   Robert swallowed. I suspected something…

   The smoke gathered above the casket and settled until a specter formed. However, it was very different from Robert’s specter; this one looked beaten and worn, thin as a twig, its darkness so dim it was almost transparent. Splotches of light gray covered its body, making it look like a tattered old rag about to fall to pieces. It crouched on the glass over Tristan’s corpse, leaning forward and panting.

   “You called?” Its voice sounded like a dry cough, like the voice of a man who hadn’t spoken in years.

   This is what starvation looks like, Robert realized. He lifted his chin. “You’re inhabiting an empty body.”

   “I know you,” the specter said in its broken voice. “We met before.” A large yellow eye formed in the center of its face as it studied Robert, then the eye shifted, rolled down to one side and focused on the shadow linked to him. “You already have a companion.”

   The creature at Robert’s feet growled and paced back and forth.

   “You will leave,” Robert said to Tristan’s specter. “There is nothing for you here.”

   “Give me his body.”

   Robert stiffened.

   The specter leaned over the edge of the casket. “I know you… I know you can do it.”

Fullmetal Alchemist - My Favorite Manga

During Christmas 2014, I made a trip to my closest FNAC to buy my husband a few Wolverine comic books, and I happened to discover a little something that stole my heart.

Fullmetal Alchemist is the story of brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric, who try to resurrect their mother using alchemy. The process fails, and Edward loses his leg whereas his younger brother Alphonse vanishes. In a desperate attempt to save his only remaining family, Edward sacrifices his arm and traps his brother's soul inside a suit of armor. Now the two embark on a quest to find the Philosopher's Stone to use its powers to recover their bodies.

Arakawa grew up on a dairy farm,
and always portrays herself as a cow.

Written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa, Fullmetal Alchemist thrives on strong characters, be they male, female or androgynous (the character Envy. What the heck is he/she/it?). For me, characterization is one of the strongest points in the story. We are presented to many people (think Game of Thrones amount of people...), and we have many women--something I appreciated.

Arakawa doesn't hesitate when it comes to blood, death and disfigurement. No one is safe in Amestris, and not just that, but Arakawa manages to make you care for each and every one of them. The Elric brothers, Edward and Alphonse, make a sympathetic duo from the get-go, and all the supporting characters (especially Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye) have their own intricate backstories as well as their own place in the story.

The adventure begins innocently enough, and the first few adventures are lighthearted--up until we learn about human chimeras. Soon the pieces of a much darker story fall into place and the characters discover they've been pulled into the heart of a nationwide menace. The story actually goes beyond the mere adventure, and brings forth questions on the meaning of God, "Truth" and the universe.

(Read from right to left.)

There has been quite a lot of talk about the religious message embedded in Fullmetal Alchemist. From posts which claim the manga is about Buddhism, to posts which claim that the manga has both a negative and positive message on religion. I tend to agree more with the mixture of positive and negative messages, as absolutely nothing is black or white in Fullmetal Alcehmist (and that's what I love about it).

Talking about black or white, Arakawa includes several intriguing villains, based on the names of the seven deadly sins. At certain points, readers actually care for the so-called villains, feel sympathy towards them, and hope they have a happy ending. But alas, we can't have it all!

The villain Envy transforms into a grotesque creature bubbling with
the faces of the innocent souls trapped in its body.

Overall, Fullmetal Alchemist grabbed me with its open-to-interpretation philosophical viewpoint, its rich story colored with tones of grey, and its sympathetic characters. I have the Kanzenban edition, comprised of eighteen colorful volumes. I strongly recommend it to anyone with an urge to take a peek at manga. You'll soon discover why it's become an instant classic.