The Song of the Cell: an Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

In the late 1600s, a distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, & an eccentric Dutch cloth-merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek look down their hand-made microscopes. What they see introduces a radical concept that sweeps through biology & medicine, touching virtually every aspect of the two sciences, & altering both forever. It is the fact that complex living organisms are assemblages of tiny, self-contained, self-regulating units. Our organs, our physiology, our selves - hearts, blood, brains - are built from these compartments. Hooke christens them "cells".

The discovery of cells -& the reframing of the human body as a cellular ecosystem - announced the birth of a new kind of medicine based on the therapeutic manipulations of cells. A hip fracture, a cardiac arrest, Alzheimer's dementia, AIDS, pneumonia, lung cancer, kidney failure, arthritis, COVID pneumonia - all could be re-conceived as the results of cells, or systems of cells, functioning abnormally. And all could be perceived as loci of cellular therapies.

In The Song of the Cell, Mukherjee tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, & are now using that knowledge to create new humans. He seduces readers with writing so vivid, lucid & suspenseful that complex science becomes thrilling. Told in six parts, laced with Mukherjee's own experience as a researcher, a doctor, & a prolific reader, Cell is both panoramic & intimate - a masterpiece.