In 1667, a renegade French physician named Jean-Baptiste Denis performed the first human blood transfusions. I spent every waking moment pouring over seventeenth-century scientific journals trying to learn as much as I could. For nearly a month afterward, I couldn’t get the idea of these transfusions-which took place long before the discovery of anesthesia and antisepsis-out of my mind.

And honestly, when I read that the first transfusions used animals as donors I was so horrified and mesmerized that I really don’t remember whether I showed up to class fully prepared that day. I stumbled on the twisted history of early blood transfusion while I was preparing class notes on William Harvey’s 1628 discovery of blood circulation. We have a countertop donation box and Holly will donate 10% to the Red Cross for every inscribed copy of Blood Work shipped, for free, by The King’s English this week.Īnd now, Holly Tucker, associate professor at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health & Society, tells us about how she came to write Blood Work.

March is Red Cross Month, so Tucker and The King’s English, as well as other authors and independent bookstores, are participating in the Writers for the Red Cross online fundraising event. This Wednesday, March 16, at 7 p.m., Holly Tucker will read from and sign her new book, Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, a fascinating history of blood transfusion and how it became embroiled in contentious religious and ethical debates in 17th-century Europe.

Blood Work by Holly Tucker