Article

Awe and wonder

Comment

7 September 2023

6 min read

The heart of the matter

Heart doctor Michael Henein steps back to consider the unseen and unique wonders of the human body’s design.

Michael Henein

Professor Michael Henein is a consultant cardiologist, and a Professor of Cardiology at Umea University, Sweden.

A model of a human heart on a short stand.

Photo by Jesse Orrico on Unsplash.

Shakespeare famously asked:

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Humans may be complex, capable of great heroism and deep depravity, yet it is worth stopping for a moment to look at the human body and mind to marvel in what we have become, and how we are made.

The visible design of the human body points out common features shared along with other members of the animal kingdom. Examples of these features are: two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, one mouth and four limbs, attached to a body and head. Detailed study of different seen parts of the body may, however, show some differences. For example, the presence of fingers and nails, hair distribution as well as a developed tail. While most members of the animal kingdom have teeth and a tongue, those two could also vary in their number and size, respectively, according to different species. Genetic investigations have shown that we humans share 99 % of our genes with animals, suggesting that our “earthly” component shares a common origin. Indeed, the twenty first century scientific findings match what is written in the Genesis story of creation, a story written over 3,500 years ago, well before genetic sciences came to light.

Creatures great and small

As for morphological differences between animal species, it is difficult to naively conclude why some are wild while others are man-friendly-even if the wild ones have different shapes, design, dietary habits, body size and life span. Other important observed features of the members of the animal kingdom are that they are all born, they all age, then ultimately die.

If we are to look at the unseen features of the members of the animal kingdom, we can again identify similarities. For example, all have a gastrointestinal tract, a cardiovascular system, a reproductive system, a respiratory system, a urinary system and much more. While these systems may differ slightly between species, the overall structure and function achieve similar purposes. For example, heart speed is faster in small animals like rats compared to big ones like elephants who have very slow hearts. Likewise, the respiratory system and the number of respiratory cycles per minute are significantly faster in running animals compared to the sedentary and slowly moving ones. Finally, the number of offspring also differs in different species, being just one at a time in big animals like elephants and horses, and many offspring in small animals like rabbits and mice. Such paradox between the number of offspring and animal size makes you think of the important determining role of the activity of those animals.

Unseen wonders

Now to turn to the rest of the animal kingdom and the unseen features of the human body. To start, let us look at the amazing functions of the human brain and its various functions. When humanity is sometimes described as the crown of creation, such a description is based on the superiority of human brain function and skills. Its sophisticated structure and how vital centres are created deep in the skull, to be protected from traumas, make you marvel. Also, the brain controls the different functions of the whole body, with its sensory and motor activities, various vital system functions including the lungs and the heart, all endocrine glands’ function, in addition to various receptors and centres that allow utmost precision and accuracy in everything we do. An example of this kind of precision is a doctor feeling a vein or an artery with the tip of a finger to insert a needle or a musician moving a finger a few millimetres while playing a violin, to produce the exact sound needed. Furthermore, the integrated function of human muscles, nerves and spinal cord is also amazing, let alone the synapsis between the nerve endings and muscle bundles, the chemicals secreted in them which allow electric stimulus transmission from the nervous system to achieve the motor function and desired movement.

The human brain also has the unique feature of storing knowledge. Of course, we should not ignore the importance of the training and programming ability of human brain. We learn how to drive a car, how to play games, how to study, how to operate safely on a sick patient. Such acquired skills are quite limited in other members of the animal kingdom. Moreover, the human brain has the unique ability to invent, discover, improve and correct errors it identifies.

Another very unique feature of human brain is its ability to conduct speech, a feature of humans that is under-developed in other members of the animal kingdom. While most animals can make noise and sounds, only humans can articulate words, sentences and even sing very complex songs. This unique ability seems to be the underlying mechanism behind the development of languages which are based on the human ability to talk and transmit information and knowledge by words and phrases.

The unseen brain has allowed human life to develop over time, building skills and achievements from generation to generation. Millennia ago, humans lived in huts together with animals, and now they build houses and palaces to live in. Centuries ago, we used donkeys, horses and camels to travel but now we use cars, trains, ships and airplanes. Our ancestors burned wood and coal to cook and to warm but now we use electricity to do these.

When we look carefully at the unseen parts of the human body, we also realize that we cannot alter any of it, despite the scientific advances made over the years. We can understand what harms our body and take measures to avoid it. Out of the ability of our brain to discover and invent, we have now produced science-based means for curing various diseases. Consider how we can replace a dysfunctional heart valve or a mobility-limiting joint. These inventions have resulted in a better quality of life, alleviating of symptoms, even helping to avoid early death, in some cases such as heart disease and cancer.

The heart of the matter

Another unseen source of life in humans is the heart. This fist-size organ is so complex in its structure and function. Recent scientific advances have enabled us to study heart function in milliseconds, hence the development of pacemaker treatments. They have also allowed clear imaging of the inside of the heart and the identification of pathologies, developments that guide practitioners to the optimum treatment of heart conditions. Recent discoveries have also allowed us to better understand how people develop coronary artery disease and how the pathology starts at the innermost layer of the arteries, particularly in individuals carrying significant risks for atherosclerosis including, smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and obesity. Amazingly, obesity has been shown to be the strongest underlying cause of other risk factors, hypertension, diabetes and hypercholesterolemia. So, nature cannot be blamed in many of these patients but our own patterns of behaviour. Science has shown that walking at least 5,000 steps each day, complying with the design of our body, reduces the likelihood of developing coronary artery disease by 15 per cent.

The unseen physiology of the rest of our body systems and the interaction between systems make us wonder how we are made. A rise of our body temperature by one degree due to a bug infection affects all body systems from the brain to the heart. A virus which cannot be seen by the most powerful microscope can destroy our lungs and cause premature death, as was the case with COVID-19 and others.

Finally, human inventions in the form of powerful microscopes have allowed scientists to study the human cell, which is the smallest living component of our body. Such small cells cannot be replicated in any factory in the twenty-first century, despite the vast scientific developments that surround us. You'll be surprised to learn how complicated and meticulously fine-tuned a human cell is and also how it functions, connects with other cells and other parts of the body. An example of this is the interaction between body minerals, calcium, sodium and potassium with heart and muscle individual cells. Such a function is critically controlled by many factors such as time, electric stimulation and pressure differences producing remarkably harmonious contractions and relaxation of the muscles without missing a beat.

Article

Books

Comment

Film & TV

Morality

27 August 2025

6 min read

Murder we wrote: how cosy crime and psycho-thrillers carve our minds

Our reactions have changed from heart-wringing cries to merely puzzle-solving

Theodore Brun

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles.

Elderly amateur sleuth stand by their pinboard.

The Thursday Murder Club convenes.

Netflix.

We love murder.

That seems to be the only reasonable conclusion when you look at the sales figures of Richard Osman’s record-busting murder mystery series, which opened with The Thursday Murder Club back in 2020. In UK sales alone, it sold over a million copies within the same year as its release, something no other book has ever done.

This was more than a bestselling debut novel, this was a cultural event in UK publishing. And no doubt Netflix are hoping for something equally seismic when their film adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club goes live.

The combination of light humour, a clutch of charismatic octogenarians, tea and cake, and the odd violent death or two to keep them entertained, seems to have struck the motherlode of British cultural appeal. I can only imagine the stellar cast they have assembled for the film adaptation, led by Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan, will take the series’ success to new heights.

As an author currently puzzling my way through my own contemporary murder mystery, I can only look on at the phenomenon in wonder and sigh for what may yet be.

But murder has always been a tricky one for me as a) an author, and b) a Christian. Do those two facts mean I have to be a “Christian author”? And if so, what kind of limits does that put around what I should be writing about? It may not sound like much of a conundrum to you, but honestly I have wrestled with this question for a long time. There is darkness in the world: how much darkness should I explore in my books? (So far, if you ever read any of my historical novels, you’ll see the answer is: quite a lot.)

Maybe I’m taking it all too seriously and murder is mere light entertainment now. Death is to be enjoyed with a nice cup of tea; evil, with slice of Victoria sponge cake.

But somehow, I don’t think so.

Recently, I was helped in my moral quandary by another crime author, Andrew Klavan. In his book, The Kingdom of Cain, published last month, Klavan explores the question of evil and specifically murder in what he terms a ‘literature of darkness’. It is a fascinating, if unusual, book. His approach is to take three murders that actually happened, and demonstrate how each has influenced a long succession of murder novels (and movies) up to the present day.

Through this exposition, we witness the changing attitudes to murder over the last century and a half and in particular how those changes seem strongly linked to the ebbing tide of Christian faith in the West.

For example, Dostoyevsky’s great novel, Crime and Punishment, was published in 1866. The double-murder, central to the plot, is carried out by a young student named Raskolnikov. He is an intellectual who is seeking to prove that the moral boundary beyond which murder lies is nothing more than a mere concoction, a social construct (or worse, a religious one) which he, being of superior intelligence, can transcend and therefore ignore. The entire novel is the story of how his conscience will not allow him to get away with this. Near the end, he confesses his crime to the young prostitute, Sonya, who responds to his confession in fearful horror:

“What have you done? What have you done to yourself?”

The second question is key.

Dostoyevsky based the plot of his novel on a real axe-murderer, a Frenchman called Pierre François Lacenaire, who went to the guillotine in 1836. Lacenaire became an international sensation when, in court, he aired many of his own pseudo-intellectual justifications for his actions – that the murders he committed were a strike against the injustice of the elites and the iniquitous power structures of the day. Rather than what they appeared to be: a grubby little double murder for the sake of a few francs. Lacenaire set the tune which many still whistle today, I’m sorry to say.

But Dostoyevsky was prophetic. He foresaw long before Nietzsche and others who would follow, that the tide of Christian faith was going out in Western civilization. And so it continued to do through the back end of the twentieth century and into this one.

Before that, the notion that murder is wrong because every human being is made in the image of God was a long-held axiom, going back arguably to the first chapters of Genesis. And in killing the image of God, any image of God, this may therefore be the closest we can come to killing God himself. Seen in that light, murder is sacrilege on an appalling scale.

But there’s the rub. That light has dimmed. The secular philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have turned down the dimmer-switch, so that it is no longer axiomatic that humans possess an inherent sacred value. Instead, in varying guises and to varying degrees, the conclusion has been that humans are nothing but self-conscious lumps of meat. We (the state, the law) may ascribe them some value. “We are all equal,” yes - but as George Orwell anticipated, “some are more equal than others.” (Is intersectionality, for example, anything but the manifestation of that prediction?)

Maybe this explains how the horror of murder has diminished from Sonya’s heart-wringing cry, into something more akin to a crossword puzzle. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Agatha Christie. But her murder mysteries don’t waste much time on the philosophical implications of, say, the local doctor bumping off the parish priest.

And from there, the genre of the murder mystery has split into two strains. On the one hand, we get the psycho-thriller, in which the horror of the act of murder is of less interest than the dark psychological state of mind of the killer themselves. But if that’s too dark, don’t worry. We can do light, too! And so on to cosy crime blockbusters, in which, if a murder was committed, it was because the victim had it coming – so let’s all calm down and have another slice of cake.

There is no space here in which to explore how, as a culture, our collective historical experience may have helped to steer us in this direction, as well as our changing philosophy. But there is no doubt where we have ended up. We see death cults all around us. We see legislation being passed in our Parliament which would have been unthinkable until very recently. We see social justice where before we saw crimes.

Think about how often the arch-crimes of history have been perpetrated on the ground of viewing the “other” as less than human, and certainly less than sacred. Then ask yourself, why should we see any human as more than a lump of meat? At what point does the rubber hit the road? - as surely it will.

What have we done? What have we done to ourselves?

I do wonder where all this goes. And yet, if the spiritual bellwethers are to be believed, perhaps we have reached low tide at long last – certainly it has revealed some pretty ugly creatures lurking at the bottom of the rock pool. Many, myself included, must hope that the tide of faith is truly on the turn. Let’s see. Certainly, if this proves to be the case, it seems to follow that our attitude to murder will change with that on-rushing tide. And so with it, the literature of darkness.

Beyond The Thursday Murder Club, there may yet be other great stories told of murder; they, like Crime & Punishment, will be far truer, and in a paradoxical sense, far more beautiful. After all, at the heart of the gospel, there lies a murder. If God himself can take such a dark event and turn it into light, then, at a far inferior level perhaps, as His image-bearers, so might we.

Which reminds me… back to my draft.

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