Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution - Hardcover

Tucker, Holly

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393070557 ISBN 13: 9780393070552

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011

Synopsis

"A fast-paced and fascinating ride through a dark and devious period in science, Blood Work is a witty, insightful, and skillfully written book that sheds light on the mysterious story of blood transfusion." --Wendy Moore, author of The Knife Man

On a cold day in 1667, a renegade physician named Jean Denis transfused calf's blood into one of Paris's most notorious madmen. In doing so, Denis angered not only the elite scientists who had hoped to perform the first animal-to-human transfusions themselves, but also a host of powerful conservatives who believed that the doctor was toying with forces of nature that he did not understand. Just days after the experiment, the madman was dead, and Denis was framed for murder.

A riveting account of the first blood transfusion experiments in 17th-century Paris and London, Blood Work gives us a vivid glimpse of a particularly fraught period in history--a time of fire and plague, empire building and international distrust, when monsters were believed to inhabit the seas and the boundary between science and superstition was still in flux. Amid this atmosphere of uncertainty, transfusionists like Denis became embroiled in the hottest cultural debates and fiercest political rivalries of their day. As historian Holly Tucker reveals, transfusion's detractors would stop at nothing--not even murdering Denis's patient--to outlaw a practice that might jeopardize human souls, pave the way for monstrous hybrid creatures, or even provoke divine retribution.

Taking us from the highest ranks of society to the lowest, from dissection rooms in palaces to the filth-clogged streets of Paris, Blood Work sheds light on an era that wrestled with the same questions about morality and experimentation that haunt medical science to this day.

About this title

About the Author

Holly Tucker is an associate professor at Vanderbilt University's Center for Medicine, Health & Society and Department of French & Italian. Her research focuses on the history of medicine. She writes for publications including the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Christian Science Monitor. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

From the Back Cover

Scientific American Book of the Month Club pick
History Book of the Month Club pick
Book of the Month Club pick

Advance Praise for BLOOD WORK

"In Blood Work, Holly Tucker has created a page-turning story of schemers and dreamers, criminals and chemists. The result is a compelling and unusual history of science, and more than that, of ourselves and the unexpected ways that we gain an understanding of our world. Blood Work is both a smart and an addictive read, one of those rare opportunities for readers to learn and be royally entertained at the same time."
--Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook

"Blood Work is fascinating and richly-researched, giving us a gory glimpse of the dawn of our scientific age."
--Carl Zimmer, author of Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain and How It Changed the World

"Blood Work is a magnificent story of the heady days when transfusions were first being performed. There is drama, intrigue, discovery and revelation in this tale and the writing is terrific."
--Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone

"Blood Work layers in everything I crave in a nonfiction narrative--big ideas, history, science, suspense, dark secrets, larger than life personalities, life-and-death issues, and a palpable sense of what the past looked, sounded and smelled like. Holly Tucker is fearless in tackling meaty, bloody subjects and nimble at making acute, original connections. Blood Work conjures up the beating heart and ambitious, flawed intellect of a past world."
--David Laskin, author of The Children's Blizzard and The Long Way Home

"At what point does medical experimentation so challenge a community's values that it needs to be shunted aside and hidden? Holly Tucker's marvelous study of blood transfusion makes us realize that the scientific community of seventeenth-century Europe struggled against age-old prejudices and contemporary skepticism alike. This vital story, wrestled out of the archives, brings us into the labs, streets, and scandals of early modern London and Paris. Wise in its judgments and supple in its elegant prose, Blood Work is history with the wallop of a novel, a book that teaches as it entertains.
--Peter C. Mancall, author of Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson--A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic

Reviews

Tucker, associate professor in Vanderbilt University's Center for Medicine, Health and Society, does a marvelous job of chronicling the 17th-century controversy pitting science against religion and shows how much of the language used then against the new technique of blood transfusion mirrors language used today against stem cell research and cloning. In 1667, building on work done in England, Jean-Baptiste Denis, a self-promoting young Frenchman, transfused lamb's blood into a human. His work angered many, including those who believed that the soul was housed in the blood and transfusion was blasphemous; others who clung to bloodletting as a treatment rather than blood transfusions; and those protecting their own scientific reputations from an unknown upstart. When Denis's second transfused patient died suddenly, Denis was accused of murder. Exploring the charge, Tucker unearths compelling evidence that the patient was murdered—by a cabal attempting to discredit Denis. The affair halted all experiments in blood transfusion for 150 years. Tucker's sleuthing adds drama to an utterly compelling picture of Europe at the moment when modern science was being shaped. B&w illus. (Mar.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393070557
• ISBN 13: 9780393070552
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304