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Reviews tagging 'Infertility'
The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee
4 reviews
mbrogs2024's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Grief, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Minor: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Infertility, Antisemitism, Pregnancy, War, and Injury/Injury detail
angorarabbit's review
challenging
informative
inspiring
sad
slow-paced
4.0
TLDR: You need some background in life sciences. If you put the time it needs you will learn a lot.
Context: I read The Emperor of All Maladies a while ago and was left unsatisfied. After reading this book I believe that I did not spend the time or brain power that book needed for me to understand it. I may also have been hindered by false expectations that the book would tell me that cancer is cured. Cancer sucks.
I really regret my poor education in life sciences right now. Fortunately I was reading this as a Libby library book on the Kindle app which made looking up definitions so much easier. Even though I was way above my education level with this book I do feel I have a better understanding of how the cells of my body work. A post-secondary class in a non Evangelical environment would have helped.
I am blinded with science. So much complexity. So much has to work exactly right every time. All those cells singing all those metaphorical songs so my brain can fire and I can attempt to understand the digital print in front of me.
Professor Mukherjee breaks up the medical content with stories of patients and scientists and starts chapters with a verse of poetry or a quote (hIs poetry selections are worth looking up to read the entire poem). This helped break up a very dense book. I had trouble with concentration, sometimes needing to reread a paragraph as my mind would wander. The patient stories also helped me understand real life consequences .
Professor Mukherhjee names the female scientists and scientists from continents other than Europe and North America who often don’t get named in US nonfiction science books. He also takes the time to acknowledge that women did not get named as authors in scientific papers until the last few decades even though they may have done much of the lab work. He also used she/her when speaking about scientists in general. I appreciated this as all too often it seems that no one like me is mentioned in this type of book except as breast and cervical cancer patients..
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Chronic illness, Infertility, Blood, Medical content, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Suicide, Terminal illness, and Death of parent
Covid 19, medial experiments on animals, Nazi human experiments, depression.taytots24's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Blood, and Medical content
Moderate: Death, Infertility, Terminal illness, and Pregnancy
Minor: Mental illness, Car accident, Death of parent, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
rorikae's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
4.25
Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee is an informative look at the history of science surrounding the cell from discoveries to the people who have helped spur on these developments. Mukherjee takes the reader through different moments where cell biology made great strides from understanding IVF to AIDs. He does this by looking at different sides of the cell and a corresponding discovery.
Mukherjee's writing easily brings the reader into the topic and he breaks down complex scientific findings into easily understandable pieces. These individual sections build upon one another until the reader has a good understanding of the cell and how it works as a central piece of biology.
I will definitely be picking up more of Mukherjee's writing in the future because he makes science accessible and easy to understand in a way I have not seen before. He is a good teacher who understands how to build his student's (and reader's) understanding through small, digestible pieces of information that build to form a whole.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Infertility, Medical content, and Medical trauma