Caesar's Last Breath by Sam Kean

Source of book: I own this.

Some people line up overnight for the latest smart phone. Other people - like me - get giddy whenever a favorite author releases a new book. I’m a pop-science fan. (Okay, a science fan too.) So, every time Mary Roach, for example, writes something, I am all over it.

One of my favorites is Sam Kean. Sadly, it has been a while since his last book, so I haven’t gotten my fix in three years. Fortunately, my wife got me his new book for Christmas. Here are my reviews of Kean’s other books.

The Disappearing Spoon

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons

The Violinist’s Thumb

Caesar’s Last Breath is about gases. Encompassed in that topic are history, medicine, as well as the science you would expect. As I have noted, Kean’s style - his strong point - is to write stories. You remember the science because it relates to people. And you remember the people because of the science. In this book, he opens with the assassination of Julius Caesar, then speculates about whether he (and you and me) have inhaled the same molecules that he breathed out. Well, “speculate” is entirely the wrong word. He does that math in detail. (The answer: statistically, you would inhale one molecule on average that Caesar breathed out with each and every breath you take.)

After this introduction, Kean looks at a number of gases found in our atmosphere in light of the past, present, and future, using a combination of stories and science. The first section is about the history of the earth’s atmosphere. That part is pretty fascinating, particularly if - like me - you missed out on too much of mainstream science as a kid. We are on at least our fourth atmosphere here on earth, and the history is really fun. The second part is about humans and the atmosphere. The final part is about the effect we humans have had on the atmosphere. Some parts are depressing, particularly our ongoing contributions to carbon dioxide. But you also get crazy stories, like that of Harry Truman (not the president - a crazy old coot who lived on the flanks of Mt. Saint Helens…) And of the Montgolfier brothers (pioneers of balloon flight), Alfred Nobel, and so many more.

I could go on with fun anecdotes and cool scientific facts, but Kean tells it better anyway.

A few things are worth mentioning, though. First is that we seriously underestimate gases. At sea level, atmospheric pressure is 14.7 pounds per square inch. Not that much - bicycle tires are inflated to a far greater pressure. But that’s a whole ton of weight on every square foot - 20 tons pressing on your body. We don’t even notice, of course, but it is there.

On a related note, it is tough to fathom just how tiny molecules are - and how many of them there are. Sure, we memorize Avogadro's Number in high school. (6.022 x 10²³, in case you didn’t remember it…) But exponents are hard to translate to reality. The numbers are too big.

Kean uses an interesting technique. At the beginning of each section, he gives the chemical formula for each molecule he will discuss (say, nitrogen - N₂, or nitrous oxide - N₂O), then indicates how many molecules you inhale with each breath. This is completely astounding.

Are you familiar with acetylene? (C₂H₂)  It’s a fuel for flame welding torches. It is a negligible proportion of air: at most 0.0001 parts per million. Undetectable for practical purposes. Medically insignificant. And yet. Each breath contains a billion molecules of acetylene. Say what?! As they say, the poison is in the dose, and the numbers this book contains are pretty good evidence of that.

There are two other references that tickled me. One was to William McGonagall, arguably the worst poet ever. And also referenced in Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men. McGonagall comes into the book because of his poem on the Tay Bridge Disaster, which was related to defects in the iron - hence a discussion of gas metallurgy.  

The final bit that I found fascinating is the explanation of the workings of the “flame refrigerator” - aka the absorption fridge. You may or may not be familiar with these. Most of our modern refrigerators (and air conditioners) use a heat pump to compress and condense a refrigerant (this is also discussed in the book.) However, there is an alternative method, which was developed by Leo Szilard and...Albert Einstein. It uses liquid and gas to accomplish the same thing, but using less toxic materials than those used by heat pumps at the time. (This was before freons were invented.) I think Kean gets one detail wrong about these. He claims that these never made it into homes - but that isn’t quite true. Kean is correct that the heat pump is more efficient and more powerful, and that this is why our homes today use them. But those of us with rural ancestors know that in places where there was no electricity, these - which run off of propane or natural gas - were in common use. I suspect Kean is from the east coast, not from, say, rural Montana.

And, today, they are ubiquitous in recreational vehicles - my trailer has one. That’s why I have refrigeration when boondocking. A little propane flame - heat - makes cold. It’s amazing.

Anyway, this book is quite fascinating, well written, and informative. Let’s hope Kean doesn’t take three years writing his next one.

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

Like a kid waiting eagerly for the next comic book to come out, I find myself checking to see when the next Sam Kean book will arrive. And then, I have to wait until the initial rush dies down so I can get it from the library. I went ahead and bought his first book, but I have, alas, limited shelf space, so I have been trying to pace myself.

For those who are interested, here are my reviews of his other books:

The Disappearing Spoon

The Violinist’s Thumb

Sam Kean’s books are best described as pop science. These are not textbooks by any means, but they do explore a particular area in enough detail to be informative. The best thing about the books, though, is the way that Kean uses stories to make the concepts real and memorable.

The Case of the Dueling Neurosurgeons is all about the brain and its function. It opens with the story of King Henri II of France, who had a lance shoved through his eye and into his brain, and ends with the famous, yet often mis-reported, case of Phineas Gage, who had an iron rod blown through his head in a freak blasting accident. In between are a myriad of interesting persons who inadvertently furthered the science of the brain by suffering damage to one part or another. Along the way, Kean introduces the many doctors and scientists who gradually pieced together the function and layout of the brain. Both patients and doctors were often fascinating characters, with unique stories of their own.

The book takes its title from the two celebrity physicians called in to attempt to save Henri’s life. They failed, unfortunately, but in the process of trying, they discovered firm evidence that the brain can be harmed even if the skull is intact. The first doctor was Ambroise Paré, famous for pioneering a scientific approach to evaluating the effectiveness of a treatment - but even more so for his line, “I treated him. God healed him.” The other was Andreas Vesalius, whose illustrated anatomy book, On The Fabric of the Human Body, was the first to really show body structures in scientific detail. The drawings are beautiful, but the methods he had to use to obtain corpses were a bit morbid.

There are a few other characters that I found particularly interesting. Several presidential assassins are featured, because their brains were studied after they were executed. In the one case (president Garfield’s killer), there was clear evidence of brain damage, while in the other (McKinley’s), there was no obvious sign of a physical problem. (There was other evidence of mental illness, just not physical signs of damage.)

Of particular interest to a lawyer was the case of Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, who suffered a stroke, but remained in denial of the damage done. In fact, the very area damaged was one that affected his ability to realize his disability. (Apparently, this is a common issue with strokes that occur in the Parietal Lobe.) In an interesting coincidence, the same problems had disabled president Woodrow Wilson a generation earlier. He likewise could not comprehend that he wasn’t the same as before, and it fell to his wife (who should get credit as the first female president) to keep him out of sight and run the country in his stead.

The most crazy story, in my opinion, and the one that still bends my brain every time I think about it, is that of conjoined twins Tatiana and Krista, who share significant brain structures, and cannot be separated. They experience a weird sharing of consciousness, in which they are two separate persons, but not quite. Tastes and sensations are often shared, which gets interesting when a taste is something one twin likes but the other hates. It’s messy and forces one to grapple with the complex interplay between the “self” and one’s sense of it and the physical biological brain which gives rise to that very consciousness.

In fact, that is probably the part of the book that is most philosophical. Since we discovered the function of the brain, there has been a search for how the brain as a biological structure gives rise to consciousness. Traditionally, there has been a belief in a mind/body duality - religion would describe this as a soul/body dichotomy. To some scientists, this is all an illusion. Consciousness - and the essence of ourselves - is merely a function of biology, the brain doing its work. This question then leads into the concept of free will and whether it actually exists. One can go down the rabbit hole really fast here. At some level, we at least experience something that resembles a “mind,” and we have built our government and our own lives on the idea that we do have the ability to exercise free will, and thus moral agency. And yet, the way this works with our brains is hardly clear. We do know that the experience of consciousness can be affected by damage to the brain, so the two are intertwined - or are the same thing - take your pick. It’s not just philosophers and theologians who debate this either. Scientists are hardly in agreement about this too.

Another topic which I found interesting was that of Synesthesia, which causes the brain to associate things that we don’t generally associate. For example, numbers will have colors or smells, or words might have taste. (One wonders if the author of The Phantom Tollbooth either had this condition, or knew someone who did.) I have a friend with this, and it is quite interesting to talk to her about the personalities of numbers and letters. Kean tells of a man, though, with a particularly severe form, which enabled him to have a photographic memory, but caused him great distress and inability to function due to the overwhelming and uncontrollable associations.

Kean has a bit of wit of his own, and one particularly memorable example was his invention of a term to describe the result of damage to a particular language processing center. People with damage to this area can string together sentences of words, often with great rhythm - but the words are not connected and make no sense. The official term is “word salad,” but Kean coined the term “Finnegan’s Wake Syndrome.”

One final bit of fun that I should mention is the fact that Kean’s earlier book, The Violinist’s Thumb, which was about genetics, has an illustration of DNA on the cover. The problem is, the spiral is backwards. Which nobody caught before the book was published. Kean mentions this in connection with Mad Cow Disease, where a misshapen protein causes damage by influencing other proteins to deform. Shape - and direction of twist - are important to life, and a backwards molecule can kill.

Obviously, I have barely scratched the surface of this book. There is so much more. I highly recommend this book, and Kean’s other books, as great introductions to fascinating scientific topics. The concepts stick in the mind because of the memorable stories and Kean’s engaging way of telling them.