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This book is for anyone with a xiphoid process, two Y-shaped ligaments of Bigelow, and a zonule of Zinn in each eye. That’s Zinn as in zinnia, the colorful garden plant. German anatomist and botanist Johann Zinn gave his name to the flowers, and your eye’s zonule. Consisting of a few hundred fibers, each the diameter of a human hair, the zonule suspends the eye’s lens in place and pulls on it to change its shape, so you can focus on near or far objects. It’s an obscure piece of ocular ingenuity that hides its light under a bushel, figuratively and anatomically, its transparent fibers being hidden directly behind your vibrant iris, which is named after the Greek for “rainbow.” The long-stemmed, vividly flowered plants you might find next to zinnias are irises for the same reason. One member of the iris family is the gladiolus. Also called “sword lilies,” due to their leaves’ distinctive shape, gladioli take their name from the Latin for “sword,” as do your gladiolus, the largest part of your sternum (breastbone), and Roman gladiators. Not that gladiators were only handy with swords. They came in several varieties that were pitted against each other for the pleasure of the masses. The ancient equivalent of Pokémon, with marginally less shameless merchandising. One matchup featured a fish-themed secutor versus a retiarius, who cosplayed a fisherman, complete with trident and net, a “rete” in Latin. Which is why your eye has a “retina,” perhaps because its blood vessels were thought to resemble a net. And now we’re back where we started, inside your eye’s miraculous anatomy. It’s connections like these, between your little-known anatomical parts and a kaleidoscope of curios, taking in geniuses, eccentrics, monsters, murder, madness, bizarre experiments, art, literature, horrific and not-sohorrific history, the names that reside inside you, popular culture, and so on, that are the basis of the stories in this book. Stories that aim to be unapologetically entertaining. “Unapologetically,” because of the not-so-uncommon criticism that a creative, entertaining medium obscures the factual message. I disagree. To suppose that facts alone are necessarily enough is to disrespect you, the reader, in my opinion. That said, of course I have the utmost respect for the facts (there are many hundreds of references, available online, to support the text) and medicine in general. It’s in my blood. I was conceived in the hospital I was born at (Mum and Dad were junior doctors); lived in one as a kid; went to medical school and qualified as a doctor; and have written about medicine since, for audiences as varied as groups of kids through to the most highly specialized clinicians. Importantly, the principles of creativity and technical rigor always apply. These are some of the reasons why I’ve enjoyed writing Bodypedia. And why I hope you’ll appreciate its stories. They are, after all, about body parts that you share with everyone else on the planet, yet that rarely see the limelight. So please enjoy this tour through the meadow of your anatomy: eyes, flowers, and all.