The Book of Blood: From Legends
and Leeches to Vampires and Veins. By H.P. Newquist. Houghton Mifflin.
$17.99.
H.P. Newquist starts
his explanation about the truths, myths and legends of blood in a decidedly odd
way – with a statement that “the sight of blood from a wound causes many people
to feel faint,” as the caption of a picture showing a person’s injured hand
literally dripping blood. Great way to
frighten off some readers! But those who
are not scared by this peculiar beginning, or can overcome the queasiness it
may cause, are in for a well-written overview of blood of all sorts, amply
illustrated with photos, drawings, diagrams, movie stills and more.
Newquist asks, “What
does blood actually do?” And he comments
that “we’re fortunate to be living in an age where we can answer that
question.” Thus begins a short survey of
old ideas about blood, ancient immortals involved with it (including the
Mesopotamian Lamashtu, who sucked blood from mothers and their newborns, and
the Hindu Kali, who defeated her enemies and then drank their blood). Mummies, statues, stained-glass windows and
other illustrations show the importance of blood in many traditions. Illustrations of the personality types
believed to be represented by the body’s “four humors” – one of which was blood
– are especially intriguing. Then
Newquist moves on to consider bloodletting (the practice of removing blood from
the body to try to “bleed out” an illness), and along the way explains that in
addition to scientists who are well-known today, there were others whose
important discoveries are almost unremembered: Michael Servetus, for example, who
in the 16th century became the first European to figure out how
blood flowed in the body – and Ibn al-Nafis, who made the same discovery three
centuries earlier, in Egypt. Early blood
transfusion, the development of the microscope, blood typing and other matters lead
to a simplified but very well-done explanation of how the body makes blood,
where it flows and how it is used by specific organs. Then Newquist discusses wounds and diseases
and how the body heals itself – including a description of the five primary
types of white blood cells and what functions each has. Illustrations of blood components are
intermingled with some photos that, like that first one of the wounded hand,
may not be for everyone, such as a picture of the opened skull of a person with
meningitis – showing how that disease lets blood and bacteria enter the brain.
Three-quarters of The Book of Blood focuses on human blood
and human discoveries, but in some ways the remaining one-quarter of the book is
even more fascinating. Here Newquist
explores blood in other creatures, revealing some truly amazing facts. He points out, for example, that reptiles are
not truly “cold-blooded” but that one creature is: the astonishing icefish, the
only known vertebrate with no hemoglobin – it has clear blood that functions as
antifreeze in the frigid waters near Antarctica, where the fish lives. Having explained that even aristocratic humans
do not really have “blue blood,” although ours looks blue when it is
deoxygenated, he talks about animals whose blood really is blue, such as
squids, octopi and slugs. And then there
is the blue-blooded horseshoe crab, an ancient and remarkable creature with an
open circulatory system: its blood sloshes around in its body instead of
traveling through blood vessels (cockroaches also have open systems, which is
why they can live for days after their heads are cut off; Newquist explains
this, too). Horseshoe-crab blood is
incredibly important to humans, because it is hypersensitive to bacteria – to
such a degree that it is used to test the purity of medicines and the sterility
of surgical instruments. A picture of a
lab in which medical technicians are carefully extracting blood from row upon
row of horseshoe crabs is one of the most remarkable in the book.
Near the end of The Book of Blood, Newquist considers
bloodsuckers, both real (mosquitoes, bedbugs, vampire bats, leeches) and
fictional (vampires), and he delves briefly into the real-life background of
some bloodsucking fiction (including the stories of Transylvanian ruler Vlad
the Impaler and Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory). But he is careful
not to make this the book’s conclusion: that is a discussion of blood
transfusions, which are needed because humans still cannot make blood in the
lab – only in their own bodies. By the
end of this book, young readers will have a much better understanding and,
hopefully, appreciation of blood, and perhaps less fear of seeing it – although
the book’s layout, with pages that look as if they have blood all over them,
seems to be designed to increase the grossness factor as much as the text is
aimed at reducing it. Design issues
aside, The Book of Blood is highly informative
and is likely to encourage at least some readers to explore the subject further
– starting with some of the books and Web sites listed at the end.
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