Understanding the human body - Helen Godfrey

The book is all about what it is to be human from a biological perspective. It is designed to capture the imagination of anyone and everyone who wants to make sense of human bodies, but particularly nurses and other healthcare students. The book has been conceived with the expressed intent of making it visually stunning and enjoyable to read. Colour micrographs emphasise the beauty of structures within the human body and the photographs of paintings move the 'biological bodies' into a broader context helping to emphase the whole person and implicitly blurring the boundaries between art and science.

The book reveals some of the amazing abilities and achievements of human bodies. Rather than providing lots of detail and describing the human body as a machine, the focus is primarily on key concepts and topics and some universal human experiences. This book has a rather unusual and novel approach which helps readers begin to understand what it means to be human.

The ten chapters emphasise concepts and topics relevant to practice. Two key concepts, form and function and homeostasis are introduced in the first two chapters. The next three chapters discuss the significance of proteins, hormones and neurotransmitters using illustrations which relate to and inform practice. The human experiences of stress, sleep, pain and growth are then explored from a biological perspective emphasising that mind and body are inextricably linked in health and illness. The final chapter on genes explains the genetic contribution to health and illness and introduces some of the contemporary topics and issues arising from new technologies and human genome research.

The focus throughout is to capture the imagination of students and facilitate an understanding of key biological concepts and principles enabling students to understand the whole person in the context of healthcare practice. The structure and functions of systems within the human body are introduced within an appropriate context rather than dominating the book's approach