Table of Contents

Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony - Lewis Thomas The Unforgettable Fire
The Corner of the Eye
Making Science Work
Alchemy
Clever Animals
On Smell
My Magical Metronome
On Speaking of Speaking
Seven Wonders
The Artificial Heart
Things Unflattened by Science
Basic Science and the Pentagon
Science and "Science"
On the Need for Asylums
Altruism
Falsity and Failure
On Medicine and the Bomb
The Problem of Dementia
The Lie Detector
Some Scientific Advie
The Attic of the Brain
Humanities and Science
On Matters of Doubt
Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
Notes

About the Author

Lewis Thomas was a physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Medical School, he was the dean of Yale Medical School and New York University School of Medicine, and the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute. He wrote regularly in the New England Journal of Medicine, and his essays were published in several collections, including The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, which won two National Book Awards and a Christopher Award, and The Medusa and the Snail, which won the National Book Award in Science. He died in 1993.