The Description of the Human Body The Description of the Human Body The Description of the Human Body () is an unfinished treatise written in 1647 by René Descartes (1596-1650). Descartes felt knowing oneself was particularly useful. This for him included medical knowledge. He hoped to cure and prevent disease, even to slow down aging. René Descartes believed the soul caused conscious thought. The body caused automatic functions like the beating of the heart and digestion he felt. The body was necessary for voluntary movement as well as the will. However, he believed the power to move the body was wrongly imagined to come from the
Composition of the human body viewed on an atomic and molecular scale as shown in this article. The estimated gross molecular contents of a typical 20-micrometre human cell is as follows: Body composition can also be expressed in terms of various types of material, such as: There are many species of bacteria and other microorganisms that live on or inside the healthy human body. In fact, 90% of the cells in (or on) a human body are microbes, by number (much less by mass or volume). Some of these symbionts are necessary for our health. Those that neither help nor harm humans are called commensal