Seeds of life : from Aristotle to Da Vinci, from sharks' teeth to frogs' pants, the long and strange quest to discover where babies come from / Edward Dolnick.
Dolnick, Edward, 1952- author.
2017
QP251 .D59 2017 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title
Seeds of life : from Aristotle to Da Vinci, from sharks' teeth to frogs' pants, the long and strange quest to discover where babies come from / Edward Dolnick.
Author
Dolnick, Edward, 1952- author.
ISBN
9780465082957 (hardcover)
0465082955 (hardcover)
9780465094967 (electronic book)
Published
New York : Basic Books, [2017]
Language
English
Description
ix, 309 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Call Number
QP251 .D59 2017
Dewey Decimal Classification
612.6
Summary
"Why cracking the code of human conception took centuries of wild theories, misogynist blunders, and ludicrous mistakes. Throughout most of human history, babies were surprises. People knew the basics: men and women had sex, and sometimes babies followed. But beyond that the origins of life were a colossal mystery. The Seeds of Life is the remarkable and rollicking story of how a series of blundering geniuses and brilliant amateurs struggled for two centuries to discover where, exactly, babies come from. Taking a page from investigative thrillers, acclaimed science writer Edward Dolnick looks to these early scientists as if they were detectives hot on the trail of a bedeviling and urgent mystery. These strange searchers included an Italian surgeon using shark teeth to prove that female reproductive organs were not 'failed' male genitalia, and a Catholic priest who designed ingenious miniature pants to prove that frogs required semen to fertilize their eggs. A witty and rousing history of science, The Seeds of Life presents our greatest scientists struggling-against their perceptions, their religious beliefs, and their deep-seated prejudices-to uncover how and where we come from"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-296) and index.
Record Appears in
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Prologue: England in the early 1630s
Part one: Peering into the body. Onward to glory ; Hidden in deep night ; Swallowing stones and drinking dew ; Unmoored in time ; "Double, double toil and trouble" ; Door A or door B?
Part two: The search for the egg. Missing: one universe (reward to finder) ; Sharks' teeth and cows' eggs ; The egg, at last ; A world in a drop of water ; "Animals of the semen"
Part three: Russian dolls. Dolls within dolls ; The message in God's fine print ; Sea of troubles ; The rabbit woman of Godliman ; "All in pieces, all coherence gone" ; The cathedral that built itself ; A vase in silhouette
Part four: The clockwork topples and a new theory rises. Frogs in silk pants ; A drop of venom ; The craze of the century ; "I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open" ; The nose of the Sphinx ; "The game is afoot" ; Caught!

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