The Body: A Guide for Occupants

and kills them. Think of that. A couple of dozen times a week, well over a thousand times a year, you get the most dreaded disease of our age, and each time your body saves you.

The great paradox of the brain is that everything you know about the world is provided to you by an organ that has itself never seen that world. The brain exists in silence and darkness, like a dungeoned prisoner.

Of course, very occasionally a cancer develops into something more serious and possibly kills you, but overall cancers are rare: most cells in the body replicate billions and billions of times without going wrong. Cancer may be a common cause of death, but it is not a common event in life.

All humans share 99.9 percent of their DNA, and yet no two humans are alike.

IT MAY BE slightly surprising to think it, but our skin is our largest organ, and possibly the most versatile.

That is unquestionably the most astounding thing about us—that we are just a collection of inert components, the same stuff you would find in a pile of dirt. I’ve said it before in another book, but I believe it’s worth repeating: the only

An interesting thing about touch is that the brain doesn’t just tell you how something feels, but how it ought to feel. That’s why the caress of a lover feels wonderful, but the same touch by a stranger would feel creepy or horrible. It’s also why it is so hard to tickle yourself.

The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will include With ease, and you beside.

Altogether, according to the RSC, the full cost of building a new human being, using the obliging Benedict Cumberbatch as a template, would be a very precise $151,578.46. Labor and sales tax would, of course, boost costs further.