The Body as a Machine

“In accord with the machine model, the body is seen as made up of parts that can break down: in the NORC interviews, people refer to illness in terms of a body part: “ear trouble,” kidney trouble,” “stomach trouble,” “suffering with my back,” “my tonsils,” “my kidney.” The body emerges as a machine that sometimes requires overhaul:” (Pg. 29 Flexible Bodies, Emily Martin).

Context of Excerpt:

In Part Two of Flexible Bodies, Martin discusses concepts of the body, health and the immune system from a historical perspective. She wants to know why we have certain pre-conceived notions or understandings of our body and our health, and as a means of understanding why she looks at what every day understandings of the body in the U.S. may have been liked at the end of the first half of the century. For research she used popular periodicals, home health manuals and books, mostly from the 1940’s and 1950’s.

She states that early twentieth-century ideas about health reflected the impact of the new science, bacteriology. The idea of microorganisms causing disease. Public health concerns shifted from broad morally informed programs to more technical concerns based on the findings of microscopes and test tubes. Once the cleanliness of the city was a prime concern, but things quickly changed to cause people to be more concerned about the cleanliness of their own immediate environment, house and bodies. Hygiene and cleanliness became paramount to preventing disease and illness.

With diseases such as polio causing great and widespread distress, a sort of hysteria over germs spread. Companies such as Lysol promoted their products as able to kill germs by the millions. Martin illustrates and speaks of the body as a castle, which must be fortified and protected from intrusion. The body’s efficiency is measured and compared to that of industrial machines, each subject to many of the same chemical and physical laws. The rest of the chapter goes on to discuss how the body, like a machine can be repaired, but unlike a machine, the body has it’s own repair system in place, the immune system.

School House Rock - Body Machine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3_H89pIWis

In the classic educational cartoon, School House Rock, the chorus here sings “I’m a machine, you’re a machine, everybody that you know, you know they are machines. To keep your engine running you need energy for your high powered revved up body machine.”

This is a classic example of a scientific concept being reinforced by media. If the children are being educated by cartoons that they are machines, from a very young age, of course they are going to grow up thinking of themselves as machines. It isn’t an entirely bogus concept, of course. Both machines and humans need fuel to function. Both machines and humans are incredibly complex, have moving parts, and if not maintained properly will stop functioning. In the case of modern technology, machines can even get life threatening viruses if they are not properly immunized. If you don’t maintain, clean and repair your machine, it will likely not function as well as if you did or in fact will cease to function entirely, similar to a human.

On the other hand, the human body quite assuredly is not a machine. http://library.thinkquest.org/28807/data/home.htm

The above website points out that the human body can do things a machine could never do, most significantly grow. The human body starts out at a single cell and multiplies exponentially to eventually form a full grown human.

The significance of comparing a body to a machine really lies in two places; first and foremost the body is extremely functional. The body can labor, become a fully functioning and contributing member of society and even fight for its country. Second, the body must be maintained. If the body is not properly fed, cleaned or rested than the body will require an overhaul, which is expensive and wasteful for all parties involved.

One more aspect of machines is that they are generally expendable. We use machines for whatever purpose they are given and if, in the end they do stop functioning we simply dispose of the old and bring in the newest best “machine.” The unfortunate issue with referring to living breathing things as machines is that people can potentially desensitize themselves or dehumanize others, which can be very dangerous.

Nevertheless, I think the concept of humans being machines has held together very well over time. I am guessing that Martin would agree with me in saying that this is probably not a good thing. In terms of teaching children how to take care of themselves, there is probably a better way.

(Image courtesy of weegeebored at www.flickr.com/photos/kenningtonfox/605534865/)

Text Quote from Flexible Bodies, the role of immunity in American culture from the days of Poio to the age of AIDS by Emily Martin, (c) 1994 Beacon Press Books.