Body in Question

In his medical history book The Body in Question (1978), Dr. Jonathan Miller explores our attitudes to our own bodies. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) adapted The Body in Question into a television series in the late 1970s. A physician, television personality, and writer known for his entertaining and accessible approach to complex scientific topics, Miller was also known for stage-directing operas although he couldn’t read music. He is remembered as one of the world’s leading opera directors. He died in 2019.

Miller begins by setting out the role of medicine in modern history. Medicine did not make a meaningful contribution to society until the 20th century, because by the mid-20th century, physicians and healers finally understood how the human body works. Although medicine existed in various forms prior to the 20th century, according to Miller, it cannot be considered a proper scientific discipline until the mid-1900s.

After briefly reviewing the origins of modern-day medicine, Miller explores how our understanding of the human body and industrial advancements go together; for instance, it is difficult to explain the mechanics of the human heart without understanding what a pump is; we can explain the heart’s “pumping” action by comparing it to how a water pump works.



Miller then proposes his main thesis—we take the human body for granted, only paying attention to it when something goes wrong. When everything is working properly, we forget about it, because there is no pain or suffering. Essentially, it is easy for us to neglect our health and well-being until we get sick or injured.

Although we typically forget our own mortality and our own humanity, our body reminds us that we are very much human and destructible. It gives us cues, even if we ignore them. For Miller, the way to preserve our humanity and our mortality is to pay more attention to the inner workings of our own body, focusing on what it is telling us. By reconnecting with our own body, we reconnect with that which makes us human, establishing a bond with our fellow man.

Miller takes this argument further by suggesting that our body is what allows us to make sense of the world more generally. The world is everything that our body is not. For example, the world is naturally disordered and chaotic. On the other hand, the human body does everything possible to maintain a constant internal environment. The human body craves order; we interpret disorder as sickness.



When we get sick, we do everything we can to restore harmony inside our bodies. Even if we don’t understand specifically how the human body works, we go to specialists, such as dentists and physicians, who can help us. We take medicine to kill infections, we treat fevers, and we reset broken bones. Our instincts drive us to protect ourselves and make changes when we are not feeling well. Unlike the natural world, the human body rejects disorder. For example, we vomit because this is an easy way for the body to expel poison or sickness, and we cough so the body can expel irritants. We might not appreciate how our body works, but it fights for its continued survival anyway.

Miller views the human body as a mechanical system. Although it is natural rather than artificial, we can make sense of it by treating it like a scientific mechanism. More importantly, we can drive science and medicine forward if we focus more on how the body works when it's healthy rather than just looking for ways to fix it when it’s sick. The only way to ever fully understand the human body is to treat it like the hugely complex system that it is.

Throughout the book, Miller considers various categories of human experience, including perception, feelings, and failings, or problems. He proposes that we each have two perceptions of our own body—the image we see in the mirror and the felt image. The felt image is the one we feel inside; it is the way we interpret the world. The image we see in the mirror is how we appear to the outside world. Although both images are important, the felt image is more so, being how we interpret our own existence, experience emotions, and feel things going wrong with our bodies, such as sickness. It is why, for example, people who lose a limb can still feel it, although it is no longer there when they look in the mirror. Because the felt image is the key to connecting with our own bodies, and our own humanity, it’s more important than our mirror image.