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In Blood Work, Holly Tucker tells a tale of fierce rivalry, bizarre experimentation and an uneasy sense of transgression

PERHAPS you remember the moment in 2006 when President George W. Bush warned of a terrifying human-sheep hybrid: 鈥淗e had wool growing on him in great quantities, and Northampton鈥檚 sheep tail did soon arise from his anus, or human fundament.鈥�

No? Fair enough. The quote is from Thomas Shadwell鈥檚 1676 play The Virtuoso, a comedy in which a daffy man of science, Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, envisions creating 鈥渁 flock鈥� of human sheep. (鈥淚鈥檒l make all my clothes from 鈥檈m,鈥� he declares. 鈥� 鈥楾is finer than a beaver.鈥�) As Holly Tucker鈥檚 fascinating new account Blood Work shows, the fears underlying Bush鈥檚 actual statement in his State of the Union address in support of a ban on 鈥渁buses of medical research鈥� [including] human-animal hybrids鈥� were far from new ones.

In the 1660s, with the advent of experiments involving blood transfusions between animals and humans, the fears of president and playwright alike took on a startling urgency. 鈥淚n early European minds, the potential for species transmutation via transfusion was real and terrifying,鈥� notes Tucker, a medical historian at Vanderbilt University鈥檚 Center for Medicine, Health & Society in Nashville, Tennessee.

Its beginnings were auspicious: in the aftermath of William Harvey鈥檚 discovery of the circulation of blood, surgeons in London and Paris began experimenting with the transfusion of blood from calves and sheep to dogs, from dogs to cows, from goats to horses, and inevitably from a sheep to a human. Britain鈥檚 first recipient was Arthur Coga, a Cambridge-educated eccentric who was 鈥渃racked a little in his head鈥�, as diarist Samuel Pepys put it. His blood, by the logic of the time, needed cooling.

The experiment was a success, at least in that Coga emerged refreshed rather than deceased. (He might have been saved by the ineffectiveness of the era鈥檚 transfusion gear, a makeshift delight of hollow goose quills and silver tubing.)

But by 1667, London surgeons were already being outdone by one of their French counterparts, Jean-Baptiste Denis. After daring open-air demonstrations along the Seine, Denis transfused blood from a lamb to a sickly 16-year-old-boy, and then from a calf to Antoine Mauroy, who was now insane but had previously been the irreproachable valet of the Marquise de Sevigne. Denis鈥檚 dizzying rise and fall 鈥� one streaked with professional jealousy and murder 鈥� forms the heart of Tucker鈥檚 tale.

鈥淎fter daring open-air demonstrations, Denis transfused blood from a lamb to a sickly 16-year-old鈥�

Blood Work has a large and memorable cast. One striking portrait is of Richard Lower, a London surgeon of steely nerve who named his dog Spleen 鈥� because, a contemporary dryly noted, the mutt鈥檚 鈥渟pleen was taken out鈥�. Those with less sang-froid than Lower wondered whether transfusions might lead to humans acquiring a donor鈥檚 traits. Robert Boyle, for one, voiced the question of 鈥淲hether the colour of the hair or feathers of the recipient animal鈥� will be changed into that of the emittent?鈥�

The story of transfusions is a deeply human one, and not just because of who was receiving all that blood. Blood types wouldn鈥檛 be identified until 1901, and Tucker posits that it was the scientific establishment itself that stalled the development of transfusion for two centuries.

The fact that many patients rejected their new blood wasn鈥檛 the problem, since other equally risky procedures were carried out throughout this period. What halted progress was a potent combination of institutional rivalries, nationalism and an uneasy sense of transgression.

Though it can wander at times into the rivalries of the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences, Blood Work is an evocative recreation of medicine鈥檚 false spring of transfusion research during an extraordinary period in the early Enlightenment when, for a brief time, it seemed that science was gambolling about like Sir Nicholas鈥檚 hybrid sheep.