"Excellent…Tucker’s chronicle of the world of 17th-century science in London and Paris is fascinating." —The Economist In December 1667, maverick physician Jean Denis transfused calf’s blood into one of Paris’s most notorious madmen. Days later, the madman was dead and Denis was framed for murder. A riveting exposé of the fierce debates, deadly politics, and cutthroat rivalries behind the first transfusion experiments, Blood Work takes us from dissection rooms in palaces to the streets of Paris, providing an unforgettable portrait of an era that wrestled with the same questions about morality and experimentation that haunt medical science today.

Explores the connection between medicine and gothic literature examining disease, psychiatry and supernatural in the nineteenth century.

A “haunting” (Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can’t Even) and deeply personal investigation of an underground for-profit medical industry and the American underclass it drains for blood and profit. Journalist Kathleen McLaughlin knew she’d found a treatment that worked on her rare autoimmune disorder. She had no idea it had been drawn from the veins of America’s most vulnerable. So begins McLaughlin’s ten-year investigation researching and reporting on the $20-billion-a year business she found at the other end of her medication, revealing a “vampiric real-life story of modern-day greed” (Leah Sottile, host of Bundyville). Assigned to work in China, where the plasma supply had been rocked by numerous scandals, McLaughlin hid American plasma in her luggage during trips between the two countries. And when she was warned by a Chinese researcher of troubling echoes between America’s domestic plasma supply chain and the one she’d seen spin out into chaos in China, she knew she had to dig deeper. Blood Money shares McLaughlin’s decade-long mission to learn the full story of where her medicine comes from. She travels the United States in search of the truth about human blood plasma and learns that twenty million Americans each year sell their plasma for profit—a human-derived commodity extracted inside our borders to be processed and packaged for retail across the globe. She investigates the thin evidence pharmaceutical companies have used to push plasma as a wonder drug for everything from COVID-19 to wrinkled skin. And she unearths an American economic crisis hidden in plain sight: single mothers, college students, laid-off Rust Belt auto workers, and a booming blood market at America’s southern border, where collection agencies target Mexican citizens willing to cross over and sell their plasma for substandard pay. This “captivating and anguished exposé” (Publishers Weekly) weaves together McLaughlin’s personal battle to overcome illness while also facing her own complicity in this wheel of exploitation with an electrifying portrait of big business run amok.

Much has been published on heart health, kidney health, and gut health. But how many of us are aware of our blood health? Is your blood as healthy as it should be? How would you even know? Blood Works is a fascinating new blood owners’ guide to help you care for the health of your most precious fluid—your blood. About 2 billion people globally are anemic, and almost as many suffer from iron deficiency without anemia. Many don’t even know they have it, just feeling tired, lethargic, and “foggy-headed.” Sound familiar? Over 600 million more suffer from acute or sometimes unrecognized chronic blood loss from causes such as heavy menstrual bleeding, obstetric hemorrhage, gastrointestinal bleeding, surgery, and trauma. Anemia, iron deficiency, and bleeding are signs of “blood failure” and have major negative health effects. Blood Works, with contributions from 48 leading international medical experts, is a must have book for all who want to look after their blood health. Your blood is the essential fluid that keeps you alive. Yet, while many of us know our cholesterol level and blood pressure, few of us are aware of our blood count. What we don’t know can affect our everyday quality of life and put us at risk if we have bleeding, an injury, or require hospitalization. Blood, and the vessels that contain it, make up the largest organ system in the body. Its balance and health must be maintained. For many decades, the treatment of first resort for anemia and blood loss has been blood transfusion, which is essentially a “liquid organ” transplant from another person. In heart failure or kidney failure, organ transplantation is not first-line treatment. In blood failure, blood “transplantation” should not be the first thing we reach for. Since the 1990s, scientific research has shown that the common use of blood transfusion is not the most effective treatment in many medical situations. It has been identified as one of the most overused treatments in modern medicine, costing billions of dollars, while causing changes in the recipient’s immune system that may increase the risk of complications and death. In October 2021, the World Health Organization called for the urgent global implementation of Patient Blood Management (PBM), stating “our own blood is still the best thing to have in our veins.” Blood Works is one of the most exciting books on blood health you will read. The book zooms in on why medical experts from around the world now recognize the need for fundamental change in the way a patient’s blood is managed. Known as PBM, Patient Blood Management places the person receiving treatment at the center of decisions involving their lifeblood. Its aim is to improve general health and treatment outcomes by managing and preserving a patient’s own blood while empowering them to share in making decisions. Meticulously researched and referenced, masterfully illustrated, and featuring personal stories from patients and their families, Blood Works is a compelling read. It will have a profound impact on your health and the health of your loved ones and is an invaluable resource for health care professionals.

Paul Craddock's Spare Parts offers an original look at the history of medicine itself through the rich, compelling, and delightfully macabre story of transplant surgery from ancient times to the present day. How did an architect help pioneer blood transfusion in the 1660's? Why did eighteenth-century dentists buy the live teeth of poor children? And what role did a sausage skin and an enamel bath play in making kidney transplants a reality? We think of transplant surgery as one of the medical wonders of the modern world. But transplant surgery is as ancient as the pyramids, with a history more surprising than we might expect. Paul Craddock takes us on a journey - from sixteenth-century skin grafting to contemporary stem cell transplants - uncovering stories of operations performed by unexpected people in unexpected places. Bringing together philosophy, science and cultural history, Spare Parts explores how transplant surgery constantly tested the boundaries between human, animal, and machine, and continues to do so today. Witty, entertaining, and illuminating, Spare Parts shows us that the history - and future - of transplant surgery is tied up with questions about not only who we are, but also what we are, and what we might become.

Blood has long been an object of intrigue for many of the world's philosophers and physicians, and references to it have existed since the earliest studies of human anatomy. Herodotus of Halicarnassus, whose writings 500 years before the birth of Christ drew on stories collected during his widespread travels, was amongst the first to identify the ritualistic and medical significance of blood. However, despite this long established history, haematology as a medical specialty is relatively new. A History of Haematology: From Herodotus to HIV traces the history of haematology from biblical times to the present, discussing the major defining discoveries in the specialty, ranging from war as a catalyst for the development of new techniques in blood transfusion, to the medical response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In this beautifully illustrated and passionately rendered history of the field of haematology, Professor Shaun McCann traces the remarkable developments within haematology and the work of the scientists and pioneers central to these advances. This engaging and authoritative history will appeal to a wide audience including haematologists, nurses and other health care workers in haematology, as well as medical students, and general physicians with an interest in haematology.

One of America’s top physicians traces the history of risk in medicine—with powerful lessons for today Every medical decision—whether to have chemotherapy, an X-ray, or surgery—is a risk, no matter which way you choose. In You Bet Your Life, physician Paul A. Offit argues that, from the first blood transfusions four hundred years ago to the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine, risk has been essential to the discovery of new treatments. More importantly, understanding the risks is crucial to whether, as a society or as individuals, we accept them. Told in Offit’s vigorous and rigorous style, You Bet Your Life is an entertaining history of medicine. But it also lays bare the tortured relationships between intellectual breakthroughs, political realities, and human foibles. Our pandemic year has shown us, with its debates over lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, how easy it is to get everything wrong. You Bet Your Life is an essential read for getting the future a bit more right.

This book aims to be a guide to the practice of blood conservation. The first chapter discusses the legal and administrative aspects of bloodless medicine describing the legal principles and practical issues relatd to refusal of transfusion. The second is on balancing the risks and benefits of transfusion includes clinical vignettes of appropriate and inappropriate transfusion. The remainder of the book covers the principles and practice of bloodless medicine, including a chapter on the scientific issues of haemostasis and the investigation of bleeding idsorders. The book concludes with chapters on blood conservation in neonatal and paediatric surgery, the costs associated with blood transfusion and the quest for artifical blood. New chapters will be included to address blood utilization in oncology and geriatric patients.

This book explores the promissory discourses and practices associated with the bioeconomy, focusing especially on the transformation of institutions; the creation, appropriation, and distribution of value; the struggle over resources, power, and meaning; and the role of altruism, kinship, and care practices. Governments and science enthusiasts worldwide are embracing the bioeconomy, championing it as the key to health, wealth, and sustainability, while citing it as justification to transform research and regulatory institutions, health and agricultural practices, ethics of privacy and ownership, and conceptions of self and kin. Drawing together studies from Asia, Australia, the Americas, and Europe, this volume encompasses subjects as diverse as regenerative medicine, population health research, agricultural finance, biobanking, assisted reproduction, immigration, breastfeeding, self-help groups, GM fish, and mining sewage.

"An artful reconstruction of seventeenth-century Paris with riveting storytelling." —The New Yorker In the late 1600s, Louis XIV assigns Nicolas de la Reynie to bring order to Paris after the brutal deaths of two magistrates. Reynie, pragmatic and fearless, discovers a network of witches, poisoners, and priests whose reach extends all the way to the king’s court at Versailles. Based on court transcripts and Reynie’s compulsive note-taking, Holly Tucker’s engrossing true-crime narrative makes the characters breathe on the page as she follows the police chief into the dark labyrinths of crime-ridden Paris, the halls of royal palaces, secret courtrooms, and torture chambers.