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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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Society & Social Sciences

BLOOD WORK

Holly Tucker

A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution

A sharp-eyed exposé of the deadly politics, murderous plots, and cutthroat rivalries behind the first blood transfusion experiments in 17th-century Paris and London

In Paris, 1667, the renegade physician Jean Denis transfused just over ten ounces of calf's blood into a madman named Antoine Mauroy. Several days and several transfusions later, Mauroy was dead. And Denis was charged with murder. In a world of medicine before anesthesia and antisepsis, blood transfusion was a dangerous, controversial new procedure that challenged deep fears within seventeenth-century Europe. Medical men, like Denis, understood that early transfusion held great promise for curing a variety of illnesses. But others had concerns that science was toying with forces of nature. Blood transfusion would soon be banned across Europe nearly as quickly as it began-and would not to be resuscitated again for another 250 years. Set in London and France during Scientific Revolution, this novelistic narrative explores the rise-and initial demise-of one of modern medicine's most common procedures. Taking us from the highest ranks of society to the lowest, Holly Tucker introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters, all ruthless contenders in the battle over transfusion. Finally, in a feat of historical research, she reveals for the first time the true identities of Mauroy's murderers-and their motivations to kill. Holly Tucker is Associate Professor of Medicine, Health & Society and Associate Professor of French Studies at Vanderbilt University, where she teaches the history of medicine. Her work has appeared in the New Scientist, the San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and the Wall Street Journal. Please visit www.holly-tucker.com

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Book Published 2011-03-01 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

"Lurid and often gruesome scientific history of blood transfusions in 17th-century France and England.. Tucker successfully presents [these experiments] 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." Read more...

"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 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."

Im 17. jahrhundert testeten Ärzte die Blutübertragung von Tier auf Mensch. Ein buch zeigt, wie sie das Leben der patienten gefährdeten. Read more...

"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."

"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.. Tucker's sleuthing adds drama to an utterly compelling picture of Europe at the moment when modern science was being shaped." Read more...

Ms Tucker’s chronicle of the world of 17th-century… is fascinating. A meticulous historian, she paints a compelling picture of rivalries and politics.

"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."