This Mortal Coil
Andrew Doig Bloomsbury £25
★★★★☆
What with a raging pandemic, rising temperatures and grim predictions of species wipe-out thanks to climate change, it might seem masochistic to read a book about the other myriad ways in which our species can perish. However, Andrew Doig’s entertaining investigation into how and why we die, and what it teaches us about how different societies have lived, is an absorbing read.
Since man first learned to walk upright, the causes of death among homo sapiens have changed profoundly. During the paleolithic period, violence and famine were the main hazards. Today, dementia, heart failure and cancer stalk humankind.
Doig chronicles the shifting patterns of our mortality, from plague and pestilence through to genetic defects, alcoholism, traffic accidents and even suicide (‘When you look in the mirror,’ he notes in one startling passage, ‘the person you are looking at is by far the most likely to kill you’).
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors may have had it tough but they were lean and fit and enjoyed a balanced diet. We might be living longer, but today’s over-abundance of food has resulted in obesity and type 2 diabetes, as well as spreading a small number of species such as rice and chicken across the globe while simultaneously driving many others towards extinction.
Indeed, before 1600, when the Bill of Mortality began recording statistics among Londoners, the link between causes of death and lifestyle was merely speculation. However, it soon became clear that living in crowded, unsanitary cities was less healthy than living in fresh air and open spaces, while later advances in germ theory showed conclusively why we should drink clean water, wash and perform operations in sterile conditions.
This is a gripping and fascinating book; informative and seasoned with dry humour (recounting Government Health
Minister Iain Macleod’s announcement to the press in 1954 about the perils of tobacco, the author notes that
Macleod was chain-smoking throughout his speech).
And as for Covid, the subject is covered with commendable economy, perhaps emphasising Doig’s overarching conclusion that, as with pandemics throughout the ages, today’s crisis is tomorrow’s historical footnote.