Blood: The Paramount Humour

8vo (24 cm), 288 pp, 14 plates. Publisher's cloth and dust jacket (stamps of the Royal Institution). "Just how do you give transfusions? Are there vampires? Do cobwebs staunch bleeding? Is blood alive? Does a woman's blood run through the baby inside her? Is there a difference between the bloods of black and white peoples? How much blood is in you? What did a leech do? What about the miraculous annual liquefaction of the preserved blood of St Januarius, the patron saint of Naples? Do pelicans feed their own blood to their young ones? What was in the old apothecary's drawer labeled `Dragon's Blood'? What blood tests are used when paternity is disputed? Can you really die of a broken heart? And dreams of blood, are they significant? An examination of these and similar questions can reasonably be made into an unpretentious book, which will then become an easy bridge between haematology (the scientific study of blood) and what one may call haematosophy (or traditional bloody wisdom)" (from the blurb).…