Pump: a natural history of the heart

Description

Millennia ago, when we first began puzzling over the mysteries of the human body, one organ stood out as vital. The heart was warm, it was central, and it moved as it pumped blood. The ancient Egyptians treated it with reverence, mummifying it separately from the body so that the soul inside it could be weighed. Aristotle believed that it was the seat of consciousness. Over the centuries, science has dispelled the myths, but our fascination with the heart has endured. From the origins of circulation, still evident in some microorganisms today, to the enormous hearts of blue whales, we journey with Bill to beaches where horseshoe crabs are being harvested for their life-saving blood, and under the sea to learn about the world’s most natural antifreeze, flowing through the veins of icefish. And we follow him through human history, too, as scientists hypothesize wrongly and rightly about what is arguably our most important organ, ultimately developing the technologies that have helped us study the heart—and now, in the most cutting-edge labs, the tools that will help us regenerate it. Contents Prologue: A Small Town with a Big Heart Part 1: Wild at Heart 1. Size Matters I 2. Size Matters II 3. Blue Blood and Bad Sushi 4. Insects, Sump Pumps, Giraffes, and Mothra 5. On the Vertebrate Beat 6. Out in the Cold 7. Ode to Baby Fae Part 2: What We Knew and What We Thought We Knew 8. Heart and Soul: The Ancient and Medieval Cardiovascular System 9. What Goes in . . . 10. The Barber’s Bite and the Strangled Heart Part 3: From Bad to Better 11. Hear Here: From Stick to Stethoscope 12. Don’t Try This at Home . . . Unless Accompanied by a Very Special Nurse 13. “Hearts and Minds” . . . Sort Of 14. What Becomes of the Brokenhearted? 15. What’s Snakes Got to Do, Got to Do with It? 16. Grow Your Own Acknowledgments Notes