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

Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution is a thoroughly researched and richly illustrated early history of blood transfusions.

The writing is clear and easy to understand. I had no trouble following the history. It is written as if the author was directly telling you

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the story.

In the Epilogue, Holly Tucker explains why she wanted to write this book. There were two reasons but the important one to me was George W. Bush's State of the Union in 2006. He wanted a ban on "animal human stem cell research”. I have never forgotten his words.

Stem cell research is a controversial subject, there were fears of human cloning, animal human hybrids and all of this is tied up with political, ethical and religious concerns. The same fears surrounding stem cell research used to envelop blood transfusion research long ago

Holly Tucker takes us through the history of blood transfusions to discuss this question. The knowledge of transfusions started with animal transfusions. At one point, the French Parliament banned all transfusions. What made them decide to do that? What if the researchers had given up? What was the important mystery connected to that decision?

Why did England and France participate in a blood transfusion race similar to the space race between United States and Russia?

There are some gruesome experiments involving dogs and other animals and even humans but the fact is that they are the history of the blood transfusions. Without them, the author would not be able to give a full and truthful account.

I highly recommend this book to those interested in medical history and those who debate whether some medical research is immoral and should be prevented.

I received this book from the author but that did not influence my review, my thoughts are my own.

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In one way, this book is difficult to read. It deals with some truly horrific experiments in the name of science and some truly horrific human stupidity.

In another way, this book is easy to read. The writing flows smoothly, the events narrated are fascinating and the science is explained in a way

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that's accessible without being dumbed down.

This book reminds me of Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List in that I'm glad I read it, I had a definite emotional and intellectual response to it, but I've no desire to read it again.

I can and do recommend this to anyone curious about the beginning of the science of blood transfusion, as long as the reader doesn't have a delicate stomach or a thin skin.

This book was sent to me for review.

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You realize that you're a nerd when you get excited for a book with footnotes. The probably with this particular book was that the footnotes were actually endnotes which meant a lot of page flipping which I found tedious and annoying. I have to say though that this minor inconvenience was the only

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issue that I had with Blood Work. As you know already, I'm a huge fan of scientific nonfiction and this definitely fit the bill (with a side of history and murder to make it even better!). Learning about the history of something (blood transfusion) which I've never given much thought about was more engrossing than I had originally anticipated. Tucker made great use of resources to paint a vivid picture of Parisian life (specifically among scientists and academics) in the 17th century. The conditions of the time which included religious bias and political favor (or disfavor) effected any advances that were being attempted by the scientific community. In fact, because of the events which unfolded in this story there was no experimentation whatsoever regarding blood transfusion for over 150 years. It was essentially a dead end that no one dared to attempt (or even cared to attempt). For anyone who's interested in either history or science this book will be ideal for you (and it's a quick read!).

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This is a very confused book. Is it a murder story, like the subtitle seems to suggest? Is it about the discovery and abandonment of technology, out of step with our normal understanding of scientific history, like the first few chapters harp on about? The epilogue explains that it's actually about

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the way moral concerns influence the development of important and life-saving science, which would have been nice to know earlier. The story of Denis and his sabotaged transfusion experiments is interesting, but I'm not sure there's a whole book in it, or at least not this book.

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Full disclosure, I read about 80 pages into this book, then I skimmed the rest. It was too difficult reading about the horrible experiments and what scientists did to both humans and animals. So, let's talk about why I gave this four stars.

Blood Work is the story of the first blood transfusion

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experiments in the 17th century. I say story because Tucker has created a really strong narrative voice in her book. The subject matter is interesting, but the way Tucker writes makes it even more interesting.

If you like very minutely detailed writing of historical scientific procedures (and you have a strong stomach), this book is for you. I have the former, but not the latter. The level of detail that Tucker uses to describe the procedures was too much for me. It made me sad and alarmed, which did not make for good reading. But, I still think the subject of the book is infinitely interesting (blood, it's so weird), and it's a story well told, so hence the 4 stars.

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The style of writing was fatiguing, and I thought the author jumped all over the place, without really maintaining a sense of smooth transition. I was excited to read this, but ended up skimming a lot. I also found all the experimentation on dogs to be disturbing. This could've been a really good

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work in the hands of an author like Michael Crichton or Richard Preston.

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