Destination: 17th Century Paris and London

Book: Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution (NEW 3/2011), by Holly Tucker

Although I love to read about history, I do not think of myself as a fan of scientific history–and to say that a book is about blood transfusions is enough to make me go hide in a closet. Yuck! Blood! Needles!

But Holly Tucker won me over with the finely crafted  Blood Work. This unlikely travel library addition made me think of the Cara Black mystery I recently read, Murder in the Latin Quarter, where the plot centers around research labs in present day Paris, mixed with Sandra Gulland’s  Mistress to the Sun, set in 17th century France. Blood Work reads more like historical fiction than a professorish explication of medical history. In fact, it reveals a centuries-old mystery.

Tucker begins with the shocking revelation that George Washington death may well have been speeded along  by blood letting, and she quotes a medieval “scientist” on phlebotomy (blood drawing):

Phlebotomy clears the mind, strengthens the memory, cleanses the stomach, dries up the brain, warms the marrow, sharpens the hearing, stops tears, encourages discrimination, develops the senses…produces a musical voice…..(and on and on).

I wanted to know more about how she made this science history into dramatic story-telling, so I e-mailed four questions to Holly Tucker.

A Traveler’s Library: Your research goes far beyond medical matters.  I’m thinking of a section where you go into detail about printing, for instance,and another on coffee, as here:

But the greatest find from South America had to be coffee, which was served with much ceremony in delicate, hand-painted porcelain cups imported from China. And one thing was certain: At the equivalent of almost four thousand dollars a pound, there could not be a better sign of…wealth and largesse.

Did you plan to use this kind of detailed background originally, or did it just evolve?

Holly Tucker: It’s precisely these fascinating details about seventeenth-century London and Paris that helped me make the decision to place Blood Work with a larger trade press, rather a more specialized university press.  Academic writing, for better or worse, tends to leave out so many of the visceral details that… got me excited about history in the first place.  I wanted readers to be able to see, smell and hear what life on the dirty streets and in scientific laboratories were like.

ATL: You had an “agenda” for writing this book beyond just revealing the little-known mystery surrounding blood transfusion.  Talk a little about that, and how you think this book will help.

HT: My first agenda is to get folks interested in history. There are just so many fascinating, and sometimes troubling, stories of our past worth exploring.  But it’s true, Blood Work has another, underlying message.  And it’s an important one, I think.

When writing Blood Work, I was struck by the overlaps between the past and the present.  Just as the seventeenth century was struggling with how and whether science could create hybrid creatures as a result of transfusion, we too are wondering about the role science plays in redefining “humanness”  (what it is and when it begins).

There were real concerns that, by transfusing animal blood into humans, science could be toying with the boundaries of human life itself.  Controversies swirling around cloning, interspecies genetic research and human embryological stem cell research [today] are very similar.  Should society try to restrain scientific inquiry?  And if so, at what price?

I wanted to offer up the past as a space where we can have respectful discussions about these critical questions still of deep importance to us now.

ATL:Were you ever tempted to turn this into fiction and invent a legendary French detective?

HT: Not really.  Actually, sometimes I felt like the detective!  [The information] wasn’t always easy to find; in fact, the book took nearly five years of research and regular travel to archives in Paris, London and Rome for me to be sure that I had all of the facts straight.  But I just knew that if I stayed focused, it would all come together.

I’ve tried my hand at historical fiction once. It wasn’t pretty.  I guess that I’m just meant to be a nonfiction writer.  My editor agrees, I think! 

ATL: You did a lot of library research, but did you also do atmospheric research by traveling to Paris and London? If so, were there any particular insights from what you found?

HT: I guess that I learned that you can’t take anything for granted.  While the facades of many Parisian buildings are still standing, the grandeur that was once behind those facades has either faded or disappeared.  Atmospheric research is best when done in conjunction with library research, especially research with original documents.

Still, I was absolutely overcome with joy the day that I snuck into the Marais estate that had once been the home of Jean Habert de Montmor, the nobleman who financed the first transfusion experiments.  I’m sure that the concièrge, its superintendent, thought I was a bit nuts myself when he saw me standing in the grand courtyard–mouth agape.  It was exactly as I had imagined it. Here was the sundial that had been engraved high in building’s interior wall.  And there was the grand staircase that Jean-Baptiste Denis had climbed the night of he transfused the mentally-ill Antoine Mauroy.  Once Monsieur Charpentier understood what I was stammering about and why I had tears in my eyes, we spent a wonderful afternoon exploring together, each teaching the other about the estate’s rich history.

Holly Tucker, photo by John Breinig

Holly Tucker is a professor at Vanderbilt University, where she teaches the history of medicine and French. In addition to academic publications, her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New Scientist, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Christian Science Monitor. She lives in Nashville with her husband, her daughter, two dogs, and two jail-breaking gerbils.

Disclaimer: Blood Work was supplied to me by the publisher for a review. I will give it away to someone chosen at random from commenters. (U.S. Resident, over 18, please).

Does learning about historic events that took place in the location you are traveling to help you enjoy the place? Do you like reading about the history of science? Holly is also the historian behind the intriguing blog devoted to history literature, Wonders and Marvels. Follow her on Twitter, @history_geek. See the following article for her favorite books for travelers.

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

United States Flag

Destination: Philadelphia

Book:

Miracle in Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen

Happy Independence Day!

Ever since I traveled to Philadelphia a few years ago, my thoughts wander to the birthplace of the United States on July 4th. Even cynics may have a hard time remaining uninvolved with the Fourth of July celebrations after reading this book. We already covered 1776. This book takes us to 1787 and the Constitutuion that finished the job started by the Revolutionary War.

The book Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen takes its name from a quotation by George Washington. “It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that the Delegates from so many different states (which States you know are also different from each other), in their manners, circumstances and prejudices, should unite in forming a system of national Government, so little liable to well founded objections.”

I read this book in a special slipcovered edition published for the bicentennial–yes, way back in 1976. I will never forget the way the book helps you travel back through time. I could see images of the framers of the Constitution meeting in the sticky summer heat in Philadelphia, windows shut so that rumors would not leak out.

The arguments flew.  Some were hot-headed, some conciliatory, as they tried to get their minds around new ideas–a new form of government.  They knew they could not continue as scattered communities along the Eastern shore. But how to solidify independence, now they had won it? Some sort of government must substitute for the former Royal colonies.

The previous arrangement suited some people just fine, but for safety and for economic reasons, they knew that they must band together.

It is safe to say that when they started talking, none expected their actions to lead to a national government. And even when they finished, none realized how long their Constitution would last and how strong it would prove to be.

The gathering in Philadelphia needed to deal with economic self-interest, but surely more lofty goals and thoughts of the rights of man entered into their thinking. Shouldn’t this new country have a king? some wondered. Would it be safer to have a committee at the head?  How to be fair to large states and small?

“The situation of this assembly–groping as it were in the dark to find political truth,” said Benjamin Franklin.

Miracle at Philadelphia traces the Federal Convention from May to September of 1787, introduces life in various states, and ends with the year it took to get ratification of the Constitution of the United States.

I love this book because it reminds me why we celebrate the 4th of July. Yes, it celebrates a Declaration of Independence, but without the Constitution, that would have been a hollow victory.

As I read, I mind travel to Philadelphia as it brings to life all the men who formed the Constitution, their struggle and their triumph.  And marvelously, you can travel to the same city and stand in the same hall where they debated. You can eat at a Philadelphia restaurant that recreates the one that stood on the spot where delegates met to have a pint. You can stay in a Philadelphia hotel across from that restaurant that dates to the late 1700s.  It is exciting to walk in the footsteps of those who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, whether on the 4th of July or some other day.  When you go to Philadelphia, please also visit the new National Constitution Center on Independence Mall, just two blocks from Independence Hall. This marvelous institution reminds us through movies, images, and role-playing, that the Constitution does not sit on a shelf–it lives.

Photograph by Jonathan D. Colman, from Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Do you have a favorite book about United States History that you think about during this patriotic season?

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Book: 1776 by David McCullough

On the Fourth of July, we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  But this book focuses on the war that preceded the Continental Congress and continued after the important paper was signed;the war that gave the document meaning.

George Washington

In 1776, David McCullough transports us to October 1775 through the end of the war. We are with the troops day by day, hour by hour.  We also read what the British were doing and saying.  The British soldiers were far from home and not overly enthusiastic. While the rag tag American troops–the home team–were cheered and urged on by villagers and farmers along the way.

In the background, the politicians met in Philadelphia and carried on their (to British eyes) treasonous business.

“We are in the midst of a revolution,” wrote John Adams, “the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.”

And as the delegates to the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, McCullough writes:

“..the citizen-soldiers of Washington’s army were no longer to be fighting only for the defense of their country, or for their rightful liberties as freeborn Englishmen...It was now a proudly proclaimed, all-out war for an independent America, a new America, and thus a new day of freedom and equality.”

The war dragged on but the book ends with New Year’s Day 1777. It ends with just a mention of the surrender at Yorktown and the final treaty that was not signed until 1783.

What better way to celebrate July 4th than to visit some of the less-frequented sites related to the Revolutionary War.

In New York City, you can travel to the very southern tip of Manhattan and be amazed at the cobble-stone streets and 18th century buildings that remain. This was pretty much all there was of New York when the war began. It is easy to miss the small Fraunces tavern where Washington said goodbye to his troops.  A restaurant serves patrons on the ground floor, and when I was there, I had to ask a waiter to allow me up the stairs to see the rooms where Washington met with his troops.

The entire National Historic Park at Valley Forge in southern Pennsylvnia is beautiful, peaceful countryside, unlike the rough conditions soldiers faced there in 1776. My favorite spot was the stone house that served as Washington’s headquarters. There you can actually walk up the wooden stairs that Washington climbed to the bedroom that served as his office.

I loved the Pennsylvania park at Washington Crossing (there is another park on the New Jersey side.)  Made famous by the exaggerated painting of Washington standing up in the boat, the park now incorporates some 18th century buildings that you can tour. Drive down the River Road where the troops walked during that bitterly-cold winter crossing that proved a brilliant move as the British were not expecting company in Trenton, New Jersey. I did not go on to the Trenton battle site monument, the spot of the decisive battle, but that is on my list for another time. Just a small crossroads at the time of the war, the city has obliterated the site of the battle, but a 150′ monument stands where the Americans had their artillery. Fittingly, George Washington stands atop the pillar, towering over the city, as he did over our history.

Finally, visit Yorktown Virginia, where the last battle took place and the British surrendered after being let down by their hired Hessian troops. Just a small crossroads at the time of the war, the city has obliterated the site of the battle, but a 150′ monument stands where the Americans had their artillery. Fittingly, George Washington stands atop the pillar, towering over the city, as he did over our history.

Note, if you’d like to read more about the book 1776, see this excellent blog post at Navy Reads blog.

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