Broken heart, in a heartbeat, bottom of one’s heart, half hearted, change of heart, heart is in the right place, heart of stone, heart of gold, heavy heart, lose one’s heart, young at heart… It would be difficult to think of another part of any anatomy that figures so largely as the heart.
As one whose life – due to hereditary hemochromatosis – revolves around the monitoring and regular letting of my own blood, I’ve developed quite an interest in it over recent years. So when word of Prof. Verplaetse’s new book reached me, promising to delve into not just the physical, but also the philosophical and sociological aspects as well of this fluid we all share, I knew it was a book I needed to read.
As I lay on the dark blue lounge chair at the Portland Red Cross, quietly contemplating my blood flowing through the 16-gauge needle inserted into my median cubital vein, through the tube taped to my forearm, and down into the bag suspended just beside the chair, like any good naturalist I began to wonder just […]
As both a naturalist as well as someone for whom the substance looms unusually large in daily life, the recent publication by Oxford University Press of Blood; A Very Short Introduction is an occasion that was awaited with particularly high interest. Now that a copy has reached my desk, no time has been wasted in exploring what its author Christopher Cooper has written about his subject.