The Oxford Companion to the Body edited by Colin Blakemore and Sheila
Jennett, Oxford, £39.50, ISBN 019852403X
BODY healthy, body beautiful, body improvable: whatever category you fall
into, your curiosity will be fed, even satisfied by this megabook. A host of
experts on everything have given their all to lay the body bare with much
scholarship and clarity. But there are surprises, too. My copy of The Oxford
Companion to the Body fell open at the section on farting. Proposed, then
written, by Adam Hart-Davis (who became known to the editorial group as
“Fartman”), it explains the whole process elegantly. Several years in the…
