Now is a good time to develop an understanding – and a new appreciation – of how bodies work. As a nurse, I’m trained to examine the machine of the body: how it’s assembled, how various parts communicate with one another, how to fix a leaky engine or a busted piston, and what happens when you put in the wrong kind of fuel or overfill the tank.

And that’s all good and important. But I sometimes get so caught up in mechanics, I forget to stop and appreciate the other aspect of the human body.

Phaidon’s Anatomy is an excellent reminder of the dual nature of the shell in which we reside; namely, the machine that can grow a new person can also dance a pas de deux. The mass of tissue and electrical wires that’s directing my fingers right now and will craft a horror story later. The signal that directs platelets to the cut I opened on my finger while I was cooking yesterday and the signal that reminds me I love my kids when they’ve been talking nonstop for eight hours.

The efficiency and the resilience. The opportunity for error and the ability to work around most errors that occur. Functionality and creativity. Mundane and sublime. Science and art. All wrapped up into one (usually) neat and sometimes extremely gross package.

How does Anatomy capture that duality?

This gorgeous book uses both scientific images, such as X-rays, MRIs, and dermatome charts, and places them beside older, more genteel and delicate renderings of the same organs, vessels, and nerves. Separately, these illustrations are fascinating, but in examining them side by side, we’re reminded that both have value not only as teaching tools – not only as insight into the ways in which the people of their respective times thought of the human body – but also as a record of the priorities and ideals of beauty.

We’re judged, at least in part, by what we keep and what we pass on – what our minds, and our brains (both the organ and the seat of emotion), grasps on to.

Anatomy also gives the reader glimpses into how the study of the human body affects the people dedicated to studying it. Do they add additional elements to their renderings, such as flowers or swords to allow them to keep the body at a distance? Do they protect themselves from examining their own mortality as they literally dig into another being, or do they confront it directly, sketching and preserving its lines and curves, knowing, and accepting that someday, someone might do the same to them? Are they decorative or frank? Emotional or rational?

The book is also a fascinating study in why certain renderings of the body, or even parts of the body, creep us out whereas others seem benign. Why is assessing a bone or a single tooth easier than dissecting an eye or staring into a mouthful of teeth? Why are male anatomical models scientific but female models, especially those that show the reproductive system (and most specifically those rendered to show pregnancy), cause extreme discomfort? Why is the brain as a structure so interesting yet the products of its scientific and medical functions – thoughts and emotions – so terrifying?

Anatomy may even contribute to the answer of an age-old question: Why is the lay response to shy away from anatomical knowledge rather than embrace it? Why are so many people afraid of blood and guts when they themselves have, well, blood and guts? Is it because knowing how a system works means knowing how it can fail and that knowing how it can fail means showing how you can fail?

Because that’s pretty scary and it makes a lot of sense while also tying in to the mainstream attraction to body horror flicks. It also explains the veneration of relics, funerary rituals, and spots around the world where various holy people’s bodies touched specific spots of earth.

And if I were a bit bummed that Roslyn Franklin wasn’t mentioned as the scientist behind the discovery of the double helix in the introduction (people still assume it was Watson and Crick who, essentially, stole Franklin’s work), I was gratified to see some of my favorite renderings of the human body in the pages of Anatomy.

In the way back, I was an art history minor, and two of my favorite paintings, Andrea Mantegna’s Lamentations Over the Dead Christ and Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, are both excellent examples of how art and science can be combined in a single work. And they both pop up.

Mantegna’s work shows an advanced understanding of foreshortening, suggesting that the artist stood at the feet of an actual body, at least while doing the sketches, and examined how different angles and shadows affected the appearance of a corpse. By contrast, Caravaggio makes the risen Christ almost comically human by painting Thomas, the doubting apostle, actually sticking his finger into one of Jesus’s wounds.

Another image I love is one that shows successive MRI shots of increasing brain activity as the subject is listening to music, proving scientifically that one need not listen to Bach – you simply need to listen to something you like. An image I didn’t expect to see, but really loved, was storyboard art from The Terminator, which showed exposed mechanical parts substituting for and modeled after the underlying natural ones.

If you love anatomy, history, art, or any combination thereof, I really can’t recommend Phaidon’s Anatomy highly enough.