Your Brain and Its Story
- Author:
Berry,
M.D., F.R.C.S., F.R.S.E., Director of Medical Services, Stoke Park Colony, Bristol. Oxford University Press. 7s. 6d.
The curiosity aroused in most people by the sight of a human brain delivered from its covering membranes is often damped by the intellectual effort required to understand the complicated architecture of this amazing machine. Many anatomists have tried to tell its story simply in books designed for the lay public. Professor Berry, unlike some others, has been at great pains to make his design suit his public. He has enlisted the help of three lay representa- tives, an education officer, a lawyer, and a journalist, all of whom gave advice on the manuscript.
The book surveys a vast amount of knowledge. It traces the evolution of the nervous system during the ages of geological time from simple beginnings in the worms of the Cambrian mud, through fish, and giant reptiles (” four times the height of a man and not quite the length of a cricket pitch “) to mammals and so to man. The brains of these various animals are very clearly described and contrasted. Professor Berry then describes the many sense organs of man, and also the microscopic structure of that part of the brain which subserves intellect. He illustrates the nature of nervous reflex action by such familiar annoyances as toothache and blushing, and by a contemplation of the neuronic machinery concerned in the vocabulary of Shakespeare. There are two chapters on mental deficiency, in which the writer tilts at the antiquated McNaughton rules, and toys, perhaps too seriously, with euthanasia, without any regard to the evil social reverberations which might follow its practice.
An extraordinary amount of information is conveyed in these 158 small pages. Although the argument is greatly condensed, the reader must not expect to find it correspondingly simplified. The reading demands much thought. Professor Berry scores, and scores heavily, over other popular writers on the brain with his diagrams and photographs. These are many, all excellent and some exquisite. So apt and informative are these illustrations that the book can be re-read from them alone. They are Printed with that masterly clarity which we exPect from the Oxford University Press. T. A. Munro.
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