Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution Paperback – May 21, 2012

This book was a good read for medical history, but was not on the same level as other medical histories that I've read. It stalled in a couple of places, and I found that occasionally all the other extraneous information added not related to the story itself, would sometimes be confusing.I had no idea that transfusion was considered back in the 1600's. All it took was one arrogant physician, trying to push the envelope. And if you've been in medical school, you've seen a few of those. In this case, dealing with such an unknown (they did not know about the cell markers in blood at that point which would cause clotting reactions if people were given the wrong blood type). It's too bad that Jean-Baptise Denis couldn't see our use of blood today, and see how well his idea saves lives today. Now to be fair, he wasn't the first to try transfusion. That definitely belongs to the British. But he tried hard, in spite of religious and medical objections, to demonstrate the possibilities of transfusions. It boggles the mind to consider that if transfusions had been possible that far back (with continued research), the lives that could have been saved in all the wars.The research for this book probably wasn't easily done. Especially if you had to get rare material in French, from the courts and royal records kept almost 500 years ago. Apparently, the author, Tucker, knows French as well as English, so that explains a lot.This is a great book to read if you want to understand how far back medical research goes, and many of the obstacles that are put in the way of those who do research.

My science-focused book club read this and it was interesting. It was also really, really cringe-inducing for any animal lover. A LOT of the book is about guys taking strays, farm animals and even their own pets and transfusing them crudely, without anaesthesia. (It does a great job of illustrating the dichotomy between the attitude of the time that animals can't really feel or process pain and the refusal by some researchers to use their own companion animals due to the observable trauma - something our present-day scientists also struggle with). The book is pitched as showing the inner workings of the scientific establishment during the Enlightenment but I didn't find that part terribly well done. It sort of wandered...there aren't any good guys and the list of bit players gets confusingly long. While Holly has clearly done her research, the book doesn't answer some of the questions one would logically ask. For example, it tells us dogs have many more blood types than humans, but doesn't explain why dog transfusions showed positive results in most of the canine transfusion recipients when the centrepiece of the book is the damage done to a human who received incompatible blood. OTOH this is a great distillation of the period and the early history of transfusion research.BTW Holly is extremely responsive to requests for information and interviews. In our case, she not only video conferenced with the book club (only 40 members and we'd already purchased the book) but is coming to the Decatur Book Festival on Labor Day weekend. I would probably give the book itself 3 1/2 stars, but Holly's responsiveness and charm made me bump it up instead of down. With better editing, her next book (and I hope there is one) should be awesome!

This book is more about the controversy surrounding human blood transfusions than the actual history of transfusions themselves. I think that many readers (including myself) were expecting something else but after reading the epilogue for the book I have a better understanding of why the author was trying to do and why she wrote the book. I think that it would have been better to explain some of that in the beginning of the book so that the reader would have a better understanding of what the author was going for. That being said, this is still and interesting easy read. The author does a good job of making the time period come alive and the back stories explaining the intrigues of 17th century european politics was very well written. If your looking for a detailed academic study of early work in blood transfusions, you will be disappointed reading this book but if you want to read in engaging story about the general state of medical science in Britain and France in the late 17th century this is a good book to read

Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution From the gorgeous cover to the fascinating story inside, I couldn't put this book down. I couldn't believe how much I learned from Blood Work, while also being completely drawn in. I knew a little bit about the Scientific Revolution before I started reading, but not a lot. Tucker really made me feel like I was there. I could really see, hear and even smell what the 17th century was like. (It doesn't smell nice!) What I loved most, though, were the unexpected characters. I expected the big guys like kings and men like Robert Boyle. What I just loved were the people that we'd never know anything about if Holly Tucker hadn't dug them out of the archives: madmen who run through the streets of Paris naked, bitter widows and delusional pirates. And the last chapter is stunning. It all comes together like the best Sherlock Holmes story. And the epilogue tells us why we should care about it all in the modern age of stem cell research.

Holly Tucker's work was originally purchased as research material for a sequel I'm writing due to its history and her knowledge  Life Blood (Book 1 of The Immortal Blood Series) . I didn't realize when I bought it that it was going to not only be informational, but it was going to be really, really good. From cover to cover I very much enjoyed this book. In the process I learned a number of things about the history of not just the "blood wars" between England and France, but also about the scientific climate at the time as well. It also struck me as timely in that the same moral and human debates surrounded those experiments as still come up today when new research is announced. Great read, learn and be entertained.

There is an increasing trend amongst some science historians to wrap up their object of investigation with tantalising sleuth like tales to appeal to a wider audience. This doesn't necessarily trivialise the subject but it is used as a pretext to cast wide their investigative net and add a human touch to what could be a dry subject.In that respect the author succeeds in spicing up her subject. Unfortunately her book is not the first to delve into the tale of the early attempts at xeno transfusion in the 17 th century and describing the race between the English and French protagonists to achieve the first successful blood transfusion across different species. A book covering the same topic was published by a medical journalist Pete Moore entitled " Blood and Justice"just a few years before the present work came out , thus undermining the claim of the author to have done original research into the murder of the madman " Mauroy" who was the recipient of transfusions by the French physician Denys.Even Wikipedia without referring to the present work mentions that he was given Arsenic by his wife possibly at the instigation of the enemies of Jean Denys!Moreover the present author omits from her narrative to mention that a Swedish Baron Gustaf Bonde was the third person to receive a blood transfusion by Denys at the request of his family. He died well before the notorious madman Mauroy received his. She doesn't explain that the improvement in Mauroy mental state was because any induced fever ( transfusion reaction) reduces the manifestations of Neuro syphilis from which he was suffering .Again there is no mention that Jean Denys had a second career in England when he was invited by Charles II to continue his transfusions experimentation away from his homeland where blood transfusion had been banned by an act of the French Parliament. He even transfused the French ambassador during his stay in London! So there are a number of serious omissions in this book which was supposed to be focusing on the character of Jean Baptiste Denys and his blood transfusion attempts in humans. I take the author's claim doing original investigative work with a pinch of salt. A quick internet search carried out after I finished reading the book unfortunately throws major doubts on her specific contribution!

Great & interesting

boring

ウイリアム・ハーヴェイの血液循環説に触発され輸血が試みられるようになった。1665年にイギリスのLowerが犬から犬への輸血を行ったのが輸血の始まりとされる。当時ヨーロッパの医学はヒポクラテスの考えが依然として主流で、bloodletting (瀉血)が治療の中心であったから輸血が治療として考えられたのは当然の成り行きであったであろう。イギリスとフランスさらにはイタリアも交えて輸血の先陣争いが起き、ついにフランスのDenisが牛の血液を人間に輸血した。精神病の治療として行われたようだ。しかし17世紀は科学と錬金術の区別も曖昧な時代であり、輸血で人間が変容する恐れを感じる人たちもいた。輸血を受けたDenisの患者は殺害され、輸血はその後150年にわたり行われることはなかった。17世紀の話で感情移入しにくいが、面白い事件に着目した話である。