Blood Work

Starred review from January 10, 2011
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.

March 1, 2011
With the current availability of high-tech medical interventions, we take it for granted that a safe and abundant blood supply is available for life-saving transfusions whenever emergencies arise. But as medical historian Tucker illustrates in this tautly written look at seventeenth-century medical science, the first attempts at blood transfusionusually between human and animalwere regarded with suspicion and fears of horrifying side effects. In turning the spotlight on an early blood-transfusion promoter, French physician Jean-Baptise Denis, Tucker uncovers a suspenseful tale of superstition, jealously guarded reputations, and criminal conspiracies. When Denis second patient, a madman named Antoine Mauroy, died suddenly after a transfusion, the doctor was accused of murder. Tucker convincingly demonstrates that the crime was actually carried out by a cabal attempting to discredit Denis, but unfortunately the scandal halted transfusion research for more than 150 years. In masterfully recounting the turmoil surrounding another eras medical controversies, Tucker also sheds light on contemporary ones, such as stem-cell research, and issues a plea to let rational discourse prevail over religious fervor.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

January 15, 2011

Lurid and often gruesome scientific history of blood transfusions in 17th-century France and England.

Tucker (History of Medicine/Vanderbilt Univ.; Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early Modern France, 2003) explains how ancient authorities taught that digested food becomes blood, which seeps into the heart and burns, and that breathing blows off fumes from the heart's furnace. Renaissance anatomists corrected other ancient errors, but they worked from dead bodies, so it was 1628 before Englishman William Harvey correctly described the circulation of the blood, a controversial finding hotly debated for years. Tucker focuses on events during the 1660s when individuals in London and Paris performed a flurry of transfusions. At first they used dogs. Anesthesia was unknown, so readers may squirm at the author's detailed descriptions. Although dog donors died, recipients seemed energized, so enthusiasts believed transfused blood would work wonders in humans. Tucker looks at Jean-Baptiste Denis, an ambitious young physician anxious to make a name for himself in Paris, who transfused dogs, horses, pigs and goats before becoming the first to use humans. In 1667, Denis created a sensation by twice transfusing calf's blood into a madman, apparently curing him. He later relapsed and died under suspicious circumstances; the Parisian medical establishment considered it murder. In the trial that followed, Denis was acquitted, but authorities banned transfusions and interest faded and did not revive for 150 years.

Conceding that these experiments produced no useful knowledge, Tucker successfully presents them as a vivid historical controversy foreshadowing the current furor over cloning, in which advocates predict miraculous cures while opponents see a perverted tampering with nature.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)