The Wine-Dark Sea Within: A Turbulent History of Blood

by Dhun Sethna

Overview

A revisionist history of medicine, in which blood plays the starring role 
 
Inspired by Homer’s description of the ebb and flow of the “wine dark sea,” the ancient Greeks conceived a back-and-forth movement of blood. That false notion, perpetuated by the influential Roman physician Galen, prevailed for fifteen hundred years until William Harvey proved that blood circulates: the heart pumps blood in one direction through the arteries and it returns through the veins. Harvey’s discovery revolutionized the life sciences by making possible an entirely new quantitative understanding of the cardiovascular system, a way of thinking on which many of our lifesaving medical interventions today depend. 

In The Wine-Dark Sea Within, cardiologist Dhun Sethna argues that Harvey’s revelation inaugurated modern medicine and paved the way for groundbreaking advances from intravenous therapy, cardiac imaging, and stent insertions to bypass surgery, dialysis, and heart-lung machines. 

Weaving together three thousand years of global history, following bitter feuds and epic alliances, tragic failures and extraordinary advancements, this is a provocative history by a fresh voice in popular science. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541600669
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	06/07/2022
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	622,965
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Dhun Sethna, MD is a clinical and academic cardiologist who has served on the senior academic staff at major medical centers including the Cleveland Clinic, Carilion Clinic, and Cedars Sinai Medical Center. He has contributed to Braunwald’s Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine. He lives in Virginia. 

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

A Wine-Dark Sea Within

1 The Oriental Heritage 3

2 The Sea Within Us 8

3 Seeing Is Believing 11

4 The Life It Brings 17

5 Body Flame 27

6 Through the Blood Darkly 31

7 Knot of Veins 36

Wrinkles in Blood Flow

8 A Different Drumbeat 47

9 Prince of Physicians 51

10 Coming to Grips 58

New Hearts for Old

11 Brave New World 69

12 The Proper Study of Man 80

13 A Disinherited Mind 93

14 The Medical Merchants of Venice 102

Air and Blood

15 Hunted Heretic 111

16 A Eureka Moment 122

17 Arabian Knight 128

18 Who's on First? 133

19 Wild Sea of Troubles 138

Physiology of Circles

20 Prelude to Glory 147

21 The Finest Hour 158

22 Closing the Ring 171

23 Ahead of the Curve 180

A World on Fire

24 Pride and Prejudice 189

25 The French Connection 206

26 Bad Blood 221

27 A Confederacy of Circulateurs 230

28 Once More into the Breach 234

"Consider the Air"

29 The Goodness of Airs 247

30 Oxford Chemists 261

31 Niter, Niter, Everywhere 267

32 Phlogiston 273

33 Concerto of Airs 282

34 Unto This Last 291

Conclusion

35 In Our Time 305

Acknowledgments 313

Additional Reading 315

Notes 317

Index 337

Editorial Reviews

04/25/2022

Cardiologist Sethna debuts with a comprehensive if clunky medical history of the circulatory system. Covering milestones including the early Greek thinkers who first recognized the heart as “a distinct organ” and English physician William Harvey’s 1628 discovery of how blood circulates, Sethna details a millennium of advancements as well as a few wrong turns (such as Roman physician Galen’s assertion that veins sprung from the liver). He describes scores of experiments—Leonardo da Vinci using a wine cask valve and live pig hearts to understand how the heart pumps blood, for example—and recounts historical controversies, such as whether the soul itself might be blood. While Sethna does a great job explaining how each discovery contributed to the modern understanding of how the heart works, his writing can be distracting (“Eccentricity and a disregard for conventions were at no time un-sympathetic to him. Among the pleasing errors of his young mind was his opinion of his own importance,” he writes of surgeon Realdo Colombo), and he’s prone to platitudes (“In academics, as in love, it does not do to give oneself wholly”). Still, it’s an impressive story; devotees of medical history will have plenty to enjoy. (June)

Publishers Weekly

—Longlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

“[The] account of the circulation of the blood took over two millennia to develop…  In The Wine-Dark Sea Within, this process becomes a saga of heroism, villainy and high intellectual adventure, told with great eloquence and verve by Dhun Sethna.”—The Wall Street Journal

“An impressive story; devotees of medical history will have plenty to enjoy.”—Publishers Weekly

“[An] intriguing work of scientific history and appreciation of the arduous path to cardiac discovery.”—Booklist

“… by presenting the story of an idea that we take for granted, but that had such a complex road, in an engaging and readable way, he has done a service to both intellectual historians of medicine and Classics and to more popular audiences…”—Bryn Mawr Classical Review

The Wine-Dark Sea Within is an engrossing look at mankind’s understanding of blood that offers even the most jaded expert a restorative transfusion of delightful history.—Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art

The discovery of how blood circulates in the human body was a seminal scientific event. The Wine-Dark Sea Within presents an engaging and incredibly comprehensive history of this paradigm-shifting breakthrough.—Sandeep Jauhar, author of Heart

At once a sweeping history of our love affair with the ‘sacred fluid’ and an engaging biography of the man who forever changed our understanding of its circulation, The Wine-Dark Sea Within offers an adventurous look at the scientific revolution of blood. In its rapid pace and its varied characters, it might be compared to Richard Holmes’s Age of Wonder: encyclopedic but never tarrying too long on the journey from antiquity to the dawn of Enlightenment science.—Brandy Schillace, author of Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher

A well-researched and masterful expose. . . . A real tour de force.—P.K. Shah, MD, MACC, Shapell and Webb Family Chair, Clinical Cardiology, Cedars Sinai Medical Center

From the Publisher