{"id":9939,"date":"2006-06-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-21T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/on-the-shelf"},"modified":"2020-09-26T16:01:32","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T20:01:32","slug":"on-the-shelf","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/on-the-shelf","title":{"rendered":"On the Shelf"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"<\/a>The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery<\/a><\/em>
\nWendy Moore
\nBroadway ~ 2005 ~ 352 pp.
\n$26 (cloth) $14.95 (paper)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Grave robbers, corpses, exotic animals, grisly diseases and grislier operations, blood, gore, and some of the most famous men in English history all populate Wendy Moore\u2019s biography of a pioneering surgeon \u2014 but none is so colorful as the surgeon himself. The Knife Man<\/strong><\/a><\/em> recounts John Hunter\u2019s role in the revolution of mid-eighteenth century medical practice, in a society philosophically engaged in the Enlightenment but still reliant on bloodletting, purging, and toxic elixirs to treat disease. With almost no formal education, Hunter was an avid naturalist who paid little heed to any doctrine but the powers of observation. To obtain the cadavers for his research, Hunter employed the services of grave robbers, turning an assorted collection of bounty hunters into an organized criminal industry which emptied entire graveyards of their wards. The house in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<\/em> was inspired by Hunter\u2019s abode, which received high society at the front and dead bodies at the back. Dismembering live animals, dissecting thousands of stolen corpses, experimenting on patients, and even infecting himself with venereal disease, he defied more than convention in his efforts to understand human anatomy. Moore\u2019s telling does not sanitize this side of the story but embraces it in lovingly graphic detail. Her account, which reads like an adventure story, allows Hunter\u2019s humanistic mission to eclipse any unanswered ethical questions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Although radical in his experimentation, Hunter was moderate in his approach to treatment. One of the most capable surgeons of his time, he favored invasive surgery only with great restraint, often preferring to do nothing and let nature take its course. He infuriated many of his contemporaries with his outspoken opposition to unnecessary pills and potions, and his naturalist studies anticipated some of The Origin of Species<\/em> by almost seventy years. Amid the controversy, he rose to become London\u2019s leading surgeon, treating such patients as William Pitt and Adam Smith, but more often the nameless poor. Moore gives us a captivating account of a man whose techniques were uncompromising, unconventional, often shocking, and perhaps even morally questionable \u2014 the man \u201cto whom anyone who has ever had surgery probably owes his or her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Caitrin Nicol<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"<\/a>Illegal Beings: Human Clones and the Law<\/a><\/em>
\nKerry Lynn Macintosh
\nCambridge ~ 2005 ~ 286 pp.
\n$28 (cloth)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

This poorly written, painfully tedious, and simpleminded book reflects the worst of modern legal academia. Law professor Kerry Lynn Macintosh makes her best public-policy case for human reproductive cloning and argues, further, that laws against it violate the Constitution\u2019s Equal Protection Clause. Macintosh repeats umpteen times various forms of the assertion that humans who are illegally cloned will have to \u201cendure a society that has attempted through its democratic institutions to prevent their very existence.\u201d But she does not confront the fact that the same could be said of those human beings conceived as a result of rape, nor does she explore the obvious respects in which her analogy to anti-miscegenation laws is inapt. Her philosophical insights are cartoonish: For example, to those who believe that cloning \u201coffends God,\u201d Macintosh replies simply that \u201cthere is no scientific proof that God exists,\u201d and, \u201ceven if God does exist, there is no objective way to show what God thinks about cloning.\u201d<\/p>\n

American courts, unfortunately, are filled with judges who learned from the likes of Macintosh and who will seek to make their name by inventing new rights that undermine democratic self-governance. But even they are unlikely to find any helpful guidance in this sloppy book.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Edward Whelan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"<\/a> The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger<\/a><\/em>
\nMarc Levinson
\nPrinceton ~ 2006 ~ 392 pp.
\n$24.95 (cloth)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"<\/a>Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World<\/a><\/em>
\nBrian J. Cudahy
\nFordham ~ 2006 ~ 352 pp.
\n$29.95 (cloth)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The recent controversy over the decision to allow a Dubai-based company to manage the operations of some U.S. ports had the effect, for a while at least, of putting port security on the nation\u2019s political radar. Perhaps the most frequently noted fact was that no more than 5 percent of the cargo containers coming into U.S. ports are inspected. That fact is a testament to the astonishing number of cargo containers that come into American ports each day.<\/p>\n

In part, we can thank Malcom P. McLean for the problem. McLean, who died in 2001, is considered the father of \u201ccontainerization.\u201d A half-century ago, McLean sold his successful trucking business to purchase Pan-Atlantic Steamship Co., a cargo carrier, to experiment with transporting containers. It was his aim to make cargo transportation intermodal, seamlessly integrating the different modes of transportation (truck, rail, and ship) by means of a standardized container. Today, the process of detaching containers from trailer trucks (or trains) at the port of departure, hoisting them onto ships, and reattaching them to different trucks at the destination seems mundane, but the significance of this innovation for both global commerce and international security is difficult to overstate.<\/p>\n

Economist Marc Levinson\u2019s The Box<\/strong><\/a><\/em> tells how McLean inaugurated the era of containerization on April 26, 1956 by transporting 58 containers from Newark to Houston aboard a ship called the Ideal X<\/em>. McLean\u2019s fundamental insight, Levinson writes, \u201cwas that the shipping industry\u2019s business was moving cargo, not sailing ships.\u201d To reduce the cost of shipping, new modes and orders would have to replace every part of the existing system: \u201cports, ships, cranes, storage facilities, trucks, trains, and the operations of the shippers themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLean\u2019s aim was to save money, and save money he did: what would normally cost $5.83 per ton, McLean accomplished for 15.8 cents per ton. McLean\u2019s obsession with cutting costs lives on not just in the global shipping industry but also in contemporary logistics management. When McLean introduced the container to the military \u2014 a move that made it possible to improve the delivery of supplies to American troops in Vietnam \u2014 logistics was primarily a military discipline. \u201cBy 1985,\u201d Levinson writes, it \u201chad become a routine business function\u201d for manufacturers and retailers whose logistical precision reduces inventory levels and cuts warehouse costs. With the help of modern communication and computer technology, containerization has made possible the extremely efficient supply chains of corporations such as Wal-Mart and Dell.<\/p>\n

In Box Boats<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, Brian Cudahy, a transportation historian, concentrates on the history of the ships that carry the world\u2019s intermodal containers \u2014 so many containers that they \u201cwould more than encircle the earth at the equator.\u201d Cudahy points out that the great aim of containerization, \u201cthe ability to dispatch a sealed container from origin to destination with no intermediate handling of the cargo it contains,\u201d can become \u201ca terrible liability if a sealed container is used to deliver a lethal cargo.\u201d He reports that \u201cnew systems of surveillance are being developed and deployed at world seaports\u201d; for instance, American-built technology is used to scan every container that enters the port of Hong Kong. But the fact remains, Cudahy writes, that the very efficiencies \u201cthat were responsible for the growth of containerization over the past fifty years can quickly become liabilities\u201d that terrorists will try to exploit.<\/p>\n

Levinson points out that when inspections were stepped up after the 9\/11 attacks, \u201cauto plants in Michigan began shutting down within three days for lack of imported parts.\u201d This, then, is the great challenge for American policymakers concerned with port security: creating an inspection and certification system capable of finding containers with dangerous or illicit cargo, without disrupting the fragile supply network of ultra-efficient modern industry.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Steven Fairchild<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"<\/a>Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class<\/em><\/a>
\nRonald W. Dworkin
\nCarroll & Graf ~ 2006 ~ 336 pp.
\n$24.95 (cloth)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The past forty years have seen a remarkable change in mental health care, as the bulk of the work has shifted from psychiatrists to primary care physicians, and the annual number of anti-depressant prescriptions in the U.S. has skyrocketed to 250 million. In Artificial Happiness<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, Dr. Ronald W. Dworkin argues that the widespread use of medication to treat unhappiness creates a gap between experience and emotion, which is detrimental to achieving real fulfillment. Charting the shifting roles of medical and religious institutions over the past few decades, he explains how \u201ceveryday unhappiness\u201d has come to be treated as a disorder, and discusses the implications for society.<\/p>\n

Concerns that Artificial Happiness<\/em> is an indictment of all psychopharmacological therapy are misplaced, as Dworkin supports the use of drugs to treat serious mental illness. However, confusion on this point is the inevitable result of his failure to explain more clearly the difference between \u201cminor depression\u201d and \u201ceveryday unhappiness,\u201d and to offer precise criteria for when medication might really be appropriate. In addition, he offers little discussion of the differences between medications in their purposes and effects; they are instead lumped together with alcohol as \u201cstupefying\u201d influences on the natural mind. The questions underlying his argument are sound: What does it mean to have one\u2019s \u201cnatural\u201d identity mediated by another substance? What are the implications for one\u2019s ability and incentive to achieve \u201creal\u201d happiness? What is the significance of the escalating numbers of Americans \u2014 both adults and children \u2014 taking psychotropic medication? Dworkin\u2019s modern history of the medical profession is extensive, and the data thought-provoking. But the interpretation lacks precision and depth, and the important subjects he addresses are more richly explored in the 2003 President\u2019s Council on Bioethics report, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Caitrin Nicol<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery Wendy Moore Broadway ~ 2005 ~ 352 pp. $26 (cloth) $14.95 (paper) Grave robbers, corpses, exotic animals, grisly diseases and grislier operations, blood, gore, and some of the most famous men in English history all populate Wendy Moore\u2019s biography of a pioneering surgeon \u2014 but none is so colorful as the surgeon himself. The Knife Man recounts John Hunter\u2019s role in the revolution of mid-eighteenth century medical practice, in a society philosophically engaged in the Enlightenment but still reliant on bloodletting, purging, and toxic elixirs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","article_type":[14],"noteworthy_people":[],"topics":[2291,2292,5000,5011,2279,5014],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/9939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/9939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=9939"},{"taxonomy":"noteworthy_people","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noteworthy_people?post=9939"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=9939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}