(4 of 4)
In more serious fashion, Miller discusses the involuntary actions of the gastrointestinal tract, re-creates classic medical experiments, such as William Harvey's showing that blood flows in only one direction in a vein, and assists at an autopsy (we see far more of a postmortem than is ever shown on Quincy). The series can be alternately informative (Roman society frowned on scientific dissections of the human body while applauding human massacres for entertainment) and provocative (proposing that falling ill is not something that happens to us but something we choose to do). But the best moments are noncontroversial explanations of how scientists arrived at concepts of bodily mechanics. The idea of the heart as a pump, for example, occurred only in the 17th century after such mechanical devices became widespread.
Ironically, the series' greatest flaw is a result of its principal asset: Miller's agile mind. The host's penchant for explaining everything in terms of something else—gunpowder to show how nerves fire muscles into contraction; cartography to demonstrate the differences between organs and tissues—can be instructive. But analogies are used so lavishly that audiences may be subject to acute metaphoritis. The going occasionally gets so dense that the viewer is tempted to cry: "Give it to me straight, Doc. I can take it."
—By Anastasia Toufexis