At the origins of the French writer Paul Valéry (1871-1945) lies a flash of lightning: the discovery of the hidden empire of our mind. Before becoming words and meanings, everything that happens to us is a mental event.

Valéry remained faithful to this flash of lightning throughout his life, as if it were a religious enlightenment. More than poetry, philosophy, or science, he was interested in constructing his mind. Others make books, I construct my mind, says Monsieur Teste, that character created by Valéry, simultaneously intellectual and not very bright, at the same time confused and courageously conscientious when it comes to addressing the Great Questions of human existence.

The discoveries Valéry made in his assiduous and silent exploration of the hidden empire are immense. This volume brings together two volumes, the Discourse to Surgeons and Simple Reflections on the Body, which deal with the dangers and reconciliation of human beings with the fact of having a body.

Having a body entails numerous drawbacks (pain, sores, unpleasant odors, nausea, sepsis, clumsiness, illness, and physical limitations: each and every one of the schisms between our physical will and our actual capacity). At the same time, having a body also presents wonderful advantages: the gloriousness of touching and perceiving, moving through space, and interacting with matter. These essays are a wandering around that paradoxical, double situation that inflames coexistence with the perfect and precarious order of our body and upon which the very practice of medicine is structured. A practice that, as Francisco González Crussí reminds us in the prologue accompanying this edition, should find the spiritual strength that enables us to confront the inherent adversity of life and, ultimately, its inevitable and harrowing transience.