A descent

The Recovered Atlas

How much of a body can you take away, and still have a person? Scroll to find out, and watch the weight.

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Body remaining 100%

154 lb of a 154 lb adult

Here you are, whole. Now let us see how much can be taken away.

First, the parts you can lose without noticing. An appendix, a kidney, the spleen. Barely a pound, all told.

Now the organs you would miss but survive. Most of your liver, which grows back. A whole lung. Your stomach.

Your arms and your legs are not keeping you alive. They are also more than 40% of your body.

What remains can run on machines. A pump can replace the heart so completely that you would have no pulse.

And the seat of you, the brain, weighs about three pounds. The lightest part of all.

So where, in all of that, were you?

You were never the parts. You are the pattern they make, and a pattern has no weight at all.

Prototype. Plates are public domain: Andreas Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), via Wikimedia; Henry Vandyke Carter, Gray's Anatomy (1918). Weights shown are approximate, pending a sourced table. The finished piece will draw on Bourgery, Albinus and Gautier d'Agoty from the Wellcome Collection and Gallica.