Book review: This Mortal Coil: A History of Death, by Andrew Doig

This is a fascinating, clear-eyed study of the major causes of death humanity has faced through the ages, and of the efforts of scientists and medics to protect us from them, writes Elsa Maishman

Andrew Doig

This Mortal Coil: A History of Death does exactly what it claims, charting the causes and intricacies of death throughout human history, from scraps of knowledge about the very earliest humans to the present day. You may get some bemused looks when carrying the book around in public, and it’s true there are moments when you need a strong stomach, but it is far less morbid than the title might suggest.

A history of death is a hard sell, especially at a time when many will feel they have had enough talk of death, plagues and unpleasant diseases. But the book is the product of four decades of research by Andrew Doig, a professor of biochemistry at Manchester University, and there is a sense that most of it was drafted before Covid arrived. The virus receives just a few brief mentions – including a nod within a section about infectious diseases, and a hope, looking to the outlook for causes of death in the future, that this pandemic will soon be over.

Other infections get rather more attention, and Doig delves into a fascinating history of scientific and medical knowledge as he charts humanity’s slow progress towards discovering the causes of disease spread and the hygiene measures and vaccines which can prevent it. Famine is also high on this list of lethal concerns for humans, and a particularly interesting section of the book offers a whistlestop education on genetic diseases. Here, Doig’s skill at clear explanation really comes into its own, as he takes the reader through a crash course in basic genetics.

This Mortal Coil, by Andrew Doig

Doig moves broadly chronologically from major causes of death of the past, like infectious disease and famine, to the non-communicable scourges of the present day. Woven through it are a series of brilliant anecdotes of individual experiments, inventions and lethal misfortunes. These snippets are interesting not only because of their astonishing detail and huge range of subject matter, but also because of the human stories which lie at the heart of each – really, they are the tales of the people who succumbed to various causes of death, and the long line of scientists and medics who have attempted through history to work out why.

Doig’s attention to detail, personable style and clear explanations make the book easily accessible, even for those with little knowledge of biology or medicine. It also raises some thought-provoking questions about how we define and record death, how fundamentally the things we die of have changed in recent history, and the ethical considerations around what measures we might take to avoid death in the future. The obvious beauty of This Mortal Coil is that in being a history of death, it is also a history of life, and a brilliant, fascinating one at that.

This Mortal Coil, by Andrew Doig, Bloomsbury, £25

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