Spare Parts: The Story of Medicine Through the History of Transplant Surgery

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)