Mortal Lessons

I. THE ART OF SURGERY
27. Joe Riker: Cancer chewed through his scalp
38. "They do not know that he envies them their safe footing, their distance from the pit." (surgeon describing his envy towards students/viewers)
45. "But this nurse is his wife in his new life of dying."
"A man does not know whose hands will stroke him from him the last bubbles of his life. That alone should make him kinder to strangers."

II. THE BODY
-about bone & its roles. "arrogant... decision to stand up." (referring to humans and the cost of having a brain/walking upright being less strength)
64. [LIVER] "neither music nor mathematics gives it pause in its appointed tasks." (as opposed to brain & heart)
75. roles of the liver; functions include bile / starch to glycogen / protein breakdown / RBC recycle / fat storage / vitamin and antibodies / toxin storage and alteration
80. [STONE] proximity of reproductive and excretory system is ironic
88. Ben Franklin invents catheter
98. [KNIFE] "I try not to listen to those terrible last questions" regarding a priest praying over the patient he is about to operate on
99. The ant story lol (contamination of patient)
112. [SKIN] "The skin is the screen upon which the state of the other organs is cast."
136. [CORPSE] "It's their turn now!" - bacteria after your death

III. ESSAYS
Bald
Smoking
Abortion
The 12 Spheres: Fu Hsi (chinese medicine + 12 acupunture rules) opposing cosmic forces of the YIN (dark/female/earth/death) and YANG (illuminating/male/heavens/life) that Taoism is based on

IV. DOWN FROM TROY
178. "He was a compassionate man who loved his patients as they loved him, and that is probably most essential in the practice of medicine."
194. Car sickness due to tilt of fluid in middle ear -> altered sense of position -> reflex nausea

Longfellow, Virgil, and me
Jacob Street
Birdwatching