The Man Who Touched His Own Heart: True Tales of Science, Surgery, and Mystery

In this entertaining history of cardiac research and treatment, Dunn (The Wild Life of Our Bodies), a science writer and North Carolina State University associate professor, explores the heart’s strengths and weaknesses through profiles of the notable scientists, artists, researchers, inventors, and doctors who wrestled with its mysteries. The book opens with Daniel Williams, a Chicago doctor who performed the first cardiac surgery when he operated on a bar-brawl victim in 1893. From there he offers an expansive survey of “ambitious individuals who believed they could conquer our most tempestuous organ in new ways, and of patients... who lived or did not as a consequence.” He includes the ancient Greek physician Galen, “the most important medical scientist in history,” whose care of battered Roman gladiators and theories on blood circulation guided doctors for centuries; Leonardo da Vinci, whose insights on circulation and heart-valve function were ahead of their time; and the adventurous Werner Forssmann, a Pulitzer Prize–winning doctor who touched his own heart and revealed its inner workings by injecting dye into one of his veins. Dunn also covers advances such as bypass surgery, angioplasty, and heart-related pharmaceuticals in this eloquent appraisal of the feats that have given humans “a billion and half heartbeats with which to do as we please.” (Feb.)