Mary Roach is at it again with her 2025 book: Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy. I say "at it again" because this is her eighth science book, all of which have dealt at least in part with the workings of the body. As the title suggests this book examines human parts which can be replaced (or at least attempts have been made to replace.)
While I was casting about trying to find some way to approach this review, I ran across a hilarious article by Sadie Stein in the NYT (Sept, 8, 2025) called "Ten Icky Things Mary Roach has (Unfortunately) Brought to My Attention." Se uses examples from all of Roach's books. I decided to copy the format and give you ten examples of things I learned by reading Replaceable You. I'm not sure how gross or icky they are but I would generally say that reading a Mary Roach book is not a squeamish person. Maybe you'll feel this way about the examples I use. Here they are in no apparent order:
- An old-fashioned method of dealing with cataracts is called "couching", which pierces the attachment of the clouded lens and pushes it down in the eyeball. The poor person still can't see well, since without a lens we cannot focus.
- Neovaginal care in transgender women is an ongoing challenge often requiring nontraditional cleaning. It also involves daily (or more) dilation to keep it from atrophying.
- Unfortunately ivory is a very good medium for replacement joints. I say unfortunately, because it might work well for us but it is deadly to the elephant.
- In the 1800s skin grafting experiments were done with dogs. They would graft the skin of a live dog to the the burn victim. It was hard to make the dogs lie still for the required weeks it took to see if the graft would take. Ha!
- Mary Roach thought she would spend a night in an iron lung to test out what it was like to have a machine breathe for you. She lasted 7 minutes.
- A surgeon once used a man's middle finger to replace a penis after cancer. I have no idea how that was supposed to work and the images it evokes are pretty hilarious.
- In the name of science, Roach had an operation to have hair follicles transplanted onto her leg to see if they would grow hair. She'll do anything for science!
- If a human heart is removed from a body, it still may continue beating for several minutes, sometimes up to 10 minutes. It reminds me of frog experiments in junior high science class.
- Oddly and coincidentally, a very famous orthopedic surgeon was named Dr. Saw.
- George Washington's teeth were not made of wood. He had several sets of dentures made for him. They were made up of a combination of human and animal teeth, and probably ivory.
I listened to this audiobook with Don and I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it more that I did. I don't usually consider myself squeamish but for some reason I reacted that way during several of her episodes of rogue doctors or badly executed experiments involving body parts. I would have to go into my head and sing "la-la-la" to myself so I would stop feeling queasy or lightheaded. Quite a few of her examples were so detailed and over my head that my mind would wander off and suddenly Don's laughter would bring me back to the listening task at hand. We had a much better experience together listening to her other books Gulp and Grunt. So I guess what I am saying is I learned a lot from Replaceable You but it is not my favorite Mary Roach book.
My rating -- 3.5 stars; Don's rating -- 4 stars.
