Review by Choice Review
Craddock (University College London) provides a lively account of the development, promises, and challenges of organ transplantation since the first reliably recorded skin grafts of the mid-16th century. Transplanting body parts was hardly a new idea; its roots go back to tales from antiquity. Here, Craddock treats William Harvey's publication of the discovery of blood circulation (1628) as a major turning point. The link between blood and life was no longer unique to an individual but the common material substrate of all respiration and nutrition. Readers learn that many early physicians tried to transfuse blood. Failures were neither understood nor overcome until the early 20th century, with the discovery of blood groups and methods of storing blood. The ability to use blood in surgery opened new possibilities for transplants--and for disappointments. By the mid-20th century, when surgeons began to understand immunity more clearly, kidney, heart, or lung transplants became possible. These surgical achievements gave recipients opportunities for productive lives and helped create lucrative markets for body parts. Today, the transplantation field grapples with previously unimagined ethical concerns. Looking ahead, Craddock suggests that bioengineering and genetic manipulation also offer new procedures and hopes. One caveat: the illustrations could be of higher quality. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates. General readers. --Tom P. Gariepy, emeritus, Stonehill College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
A French embroiderer, two-headed dogs, saints Cosmas and Damian, sausage skin, and Charles Lindbergh all have a place in Craddock's distinctive history of transplantation. His time line tracks skin grafts for reconstructing mutilated noses (resulting from trauma or syphilis), blood transfusions (animal to human first, then human to human), the initial successful kidney transplant, and the first heart transplant. Tooth transplants (typically extracted from poor people or children and received by members of the upper class) were in vogue during the late 1700s, signifying "the first exchanges of body parts to become heartless financial transactions." Craddock summarizes other advances in medical science, including the ability to suture blood vessels, an understanding of blood typing, and the development of powerful immunosuppressive drugs. Ethical challenges and some transplant consequences are raised, such as issues of identity and metamorphosis, the donor-recipient relationship, and how the increasing need for transplantable organs outstrips the available supply. Craddock concludes, "transplants have become routine miracles." Indeed, organ transplants save lives while also altering the way we comprehend the human body and how we accept this remarkable form of sharing.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Historian and filmmaker Craddock debuts with an accessible and wide-ranging account of the development of skin, blood, tooth, and organ transplantation from 1550 to the modern day. Tracing the evolution of transplant surgery from rudimentary skin grafts to artificial hearts and stem cells, Craddock profiles practitioners including 17th-century French surgeon Jean-Baptiste Denis, who performed a "live blood transfusion" between two dogs at the foot of the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in 1667, and examines how mythology, including the Chinese tale of a "brave but stupid man" who receives a new heart from a judge of the underworld, influenced real-world views on transplantation. Amid the toe-curling descriptions of vivisected dogs and doomed trial runs at human-to-human tooth transplants are hopeful and inspiring accounts of how farmers and embroiderers shared their knowledge with medical practitioners and the roles played by sausage skins and spinach leaves in the development of skills and materials required for organ transplants. Thoroughly researched and appealingly digressive, this fascinating medical and cultural history sheds light on what it means to be human. Illus. (May)
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