my family moved to california in 1962 after i graduated from high school. i came to the college of southern idaho in 1969 and did my doctoral dissertation at the university of utah, gold with choreographers who described regions in england and that itself made me aware of the rich possibilities of understanding local history in terms of geography and all the different components of local history. wikipedia >> anything you are working on coming up next? >> i'm doing research on the college of southern idaho. the college was created in 1965. i came here in 1969. the college and i grew up together. >> thank you so much, jim gentry. >> thank you for your time. >> you are watching 48 hours of

nonfiction books. >> and now holly tucker provides an account of the first blood transfusions which took place in france in 1667 and the fallout of those experiments. >> we are going to get started very shortly. holly will get her computer plugged in and i will do the introduction while she is doing that. i would like to welcome you to the national museum of health and medicine science cabinet. we call it the medical museum science cafe. this is one of our outreach programs we are doing serving in conjunction with opening up a new building so if you are from silver spring we got a lot of people from this area or close by neighbors our museum is going to be on opening up in a new facility in silver spring, maryland, this fall. we are located at the medical center and the medical center is

going to be closing now through september and so in that time period we are going to pack up and move all of our collections to a new location in silver spring. if you are familiar with the forest glen area or the seminary we will be across the street from that so you can visit us there this fall. in the meantime we are doing some things in the community to make sure our audiences and new folks or neighbors will get to know us and become familiar with us and want to participate in programs at the museum itself. we hope the science cafe is something you will enjoy coming back to when the topic is of interest to you. we will do this on a monthly basis or bimonthly basis. if you are interested in this and this is something that appeals to you do sign our grid at the back of the room. they're the clipboard and you can give your e-mail address and we will let you know about cutting programs and activities. so please do so and feel free to snag writers here with a book

sale so if you would like the book holly will be here in a couple minutes to sign our books so i would love for you to enjoy that. i would like to be introduced you to our speaker. so get ready. this is holly tucker. she majored in french and political science at indiana university and went on to earn her ph.d. at the university of wisconsin madison. she is a professor of french and history of medicine at vanderbilt university. she teaches courses on history of early medicine, medicine and literature as well as other forces in early french literature and culture. i was first introduced to ollie -- this is our first time meeting -- at her blog. i have been a fan for quite a while and if you don't know about wonderful marble by encourage you to google it. it is an interesting blog. they call it community for curious minds who love history, odd stories and a good read.

it started out as an area where she and her students could communicate and it has run. >> this is that type of . she knows that. i want you to know that. if you have questions feel free to interact. if you have comments i hope you will make them. her book is interesting because it is history of medicine, but it brings of current topics and things we are all concerned about. i hope you will enjoy hearing from holly. are you ready? we have to apply again. let's do it.

welcome. [applause] >> i can tell you as we left arlington about two and a half hours ago i checked on my ipad. it can't? quest toward approval. directions. accidently hit walking. said that if i walked it would take me 12 hours. i feel i really should have taken. thank you all for being so kind and patient as i was sitting in the interstate. so as we get set up i want to talk to you a little bit about the origins of this book.

it has been a fascinating experience. i started five years ago. i was planning for cap class. .. vendor bill university where i have the opportunity to teach a whole right of class's. one of my favorite is from aerosol to the enlightenment. one of the lectures i needed to prepare was on the early discovery of this blood circulation in 1628, and i did what any good professor does, i was cramming for my lecture. i was looking around. i was looking for some interesting stories. a stumble on a reference to blood transfusion. it's now something i had heard about. it very interesting. incredibly hot. , so to look around and discovered that there were transfusing animals to animals.

the 16 fifties. i'm sorry, 16 fifties. there wokas up from animals to humans. there were using animals as donors. that's less of a to look at. and cover the fact that as there were doing this they frightened a lot of people. the whole idea of blood transfusion, as you can imagine, hundreds of years before discovery of blood types in 1900 and 1901, long before the discovery of amnesty she an antiseptic in the 19th century. there were transfusing humans with animal blood. it became even odder. just ignore the screen from mullen. it became honor that i realize they started quickly and ended just as quickly after there had been a failed test cheese in france, a chance jesus was

called upon murder charges. after that court case it was determined that blood transfusion would be outlawed in france. it was later ended in france, england, and italy. so that is when i began. for as odd as it seems one of the things that was interesting to me, a gesture. would you mind? page down. enter. >> it's not recognizing. >> that's okay. i can do this without the illustrations just as well. so what is interesting to me is -- do we have any positions

here? okay. can you imagine doing modern medicine without the benefits of transfusions? well, it can't be done. there is such a thing as bloodless surgery and a way of using the patient's own blood during emergency surgery is an trauma surgery. but for the most part when i talk to physicians and health care professionals it is really hard to imagine modern medicine without the benefits a blood transfusion. now, interestingly enough the whole idea of blood transfusion in the 17th century was something that was radical. they spent millennia imagining the ways that they could take blood out of the body. when you think about early medicine you think of leeches and you think of lancets and you think of blood bowls. why is that? why is it the first thing we imagine in early madison is

bloodletting? well, it comes down to a a very simple but permeating the notion of how the body work to. from the fifth century bc of hypocrisy, second century a ce, the body was thought to be based on the balance of what were called humorous. those were essentially fluids in the body. the fourth humors or blood, phlegm, black bile, and what they called yellow bile. and so when your body was in balance to those for fluids were in a happy state of equilibrium. when you and you are healthy. when you're not healthy it meant that those laws were out of whack and something needed to be adjusted. now, you can add just that through nutrition, and of get to why that is in a moment. the fastest way you can do it would be essentially -- don't

worry about it. will just skip the slides. the fastest way that you could adjust the bodies help would be to remove the offending tumors'. so, that was the first case of action. when i get sick a reach, if i have a headache a fever, the first thing you would do if you were sick in the 17th century and long before is reached for a barber surgeon, the same person that would give you a shave. the same person who would to your bloodletting or major surgeries. now, imagine putting blood in the read quite radical. another thing is that blood was produced again. it was thought that blood was produced through the active beating. you would need something to my digested. it would be concocted in your liver and move to the heart. the heart operated like a furnace. that is how your body got its

energy, heat. they did not note yet about the relationship of breathing and air and oxen his rating, putting oxygen into your blood. so to breathe and you were stoking the fires. to breathe out you were essentially cooling off the fumes. so two things. we were getting used tippling blood out and also understanding that blood was something that was definitely produced in digestive systems, something in very important happened in the 16 twenties, and that was the discovery of blood circulation. that is where i started. william harvey started to wonder not just about the basis of the he moral way of understanding the body, but he also started to wonder if it's possible that all this blood is produced by the day -- by the digestive system which got people thinking and doing experiments both with cadavers and then live animal

bodies. started to test this notion. he said. all right. i'm trying to figure out what these are. what did these things do? we don't know about blood circulating. it was thought that either they reinforce the veins were kept all of the fluid sucked from cooling down into the feet. so they operated something started by wondering what these were. then he performed dissections. he started to move toward this low and cold-blooded animals like snakes. it was being watched. starting to get close to the idea of circulation. what he did is he did a dissection on the human. he cut open a human heart, measured the amount of blood in one of the cavities, one of the

chambers of the heart. he determined that there was about 2 ounces of blood in one of the chambers, counted the number of heartbeats in average human would have over 30 minutes then what he did is a simple multiplication. he found out that the body through the system of blood making an to the fact that the heart would have to burn off all of this, there would have to be an obscene amount of blood produced, something like 540 pounds of blood would have to be produced in something in short as a half-hour. and he said that there is no way that this would be possible for him to imagine. he speculated and proposed the notion of blood circulation. from there that set off on whole flurry of experiments. in england by some people you probably recognize, the greatest architect of london, he actually

started his career as a natural philosopher as they call doctors at the time. what he began to do is he began to inject animals with all different types of fluids, crazy fluids like opium and beer and wine and melt because the idea was if harvey is wrong and blood doesn't circulate in you put this stuff, he bypassed the digestive system, but the stuff into the veins and it would go right to the heart and be burned off and there would be no immediate effect. there would be no lasting effect. he was seeing his son of dart drunk, stoned, and many dogs dead. that allowed the early natural philosophers in england to imagine not just in a fusion but to start saying if we can put this stuff into the veins what would happen if we would start to put other things like blood?

in the 1660's that a diaz started to move forward. particularly they started to wonder, what if we took the blood of one dog and moved into another dark? and in the 1660's a member of the royal society began his first experimental, and the dog survived. the english were getting very, very close to the whole idea. this is working in dogs. maybe what we can start doing is imagining transfusions in humans well, something happened in between the great fire of london, the plate. as excited as the english were about doing these jazz fusion experiments they had a lot of challenges to be able to move forward. across the channel in france different things are happening. there was no great fire. they were building mighty, mighty palaces later resigned. but they are extremely

conservative. in fact, the french catholics think that the whole idea of circulation is disgusting, sacrilegious even. to the point that in a sense that everything is to be known about the body is, indeed, already known so they're hearing the english are doing these experiments. they don't want to be doing them. england and france are in the thick of pretty much a space race if we can talk and a consistently. the whole idea of nation-building is developing. for our nation to have prominence you had to be a victory on the battlefield but you also had to be of victor and science. so the french, in the academy, french academy of science, they start to do these experiments, hopefully, to determine that the english or wrong. their experiments did not work. but it took me awhile to figure

out how it was that the english had such great success in the 1660's and the french did not. you are all thinking, how is it they can be doing this with animals? we know the animals have more blood test in humans. they don't know anything about anesthesia. they don't know anything about antiseptic for blood type. how is it animals can survive? well, there are three variables. the first is how fast the blood goes end. the second is how much. third, whether there has been previous exposure. it is very likely that not a lot of blood get into these animals to begin with. why? because they were using really rudimentary systems for transfusion. the first transfusion among animals was done actually with the abuse. they would cut down on the animals and then gently insert cuzco that have been wrapped

around other goose quills with twine and then connect them that way. now, we know through the case reports that the blood did not move very fast. in many times a just cause of the minute it went through a goose quill. but best of to an answer my question, why didn't the france succeeds? well, after i've spent a lot of time working in the archives in the academy of sciences and looking at the minister of minutes of these secret experiments, they were reusing their dogs. so in many of the experiments the dogs had had previous exposure. well, the france determined that the english were, of course, liars. there were happy about that. but at the same time, and this is the focus of my work and my book. a fascinating character named john baptiste trained in the south of france at a competing

school, the university of montpellier, the illustrious paris faculty of medicine at the university of paris. the school is highly traditional. if you want to practice in paris you absolutely have to get your degree at the faculty of medicine. you also have to be of a noble class tomorrow bread, and you have to have lots of connections. welcome by john baptiste, seven frenchmen. low birth. his father was actually an arson, trained at montpellier. that did not stop him wanting to go up to paris to make a name for himself. what is the easiest way to make an increase of? well, for any of you who have children you know that to get your attention that children do exactly what you don't want them to do, and that is exactly what john baptiste did. he wanted to enrage the paris of the and to put his name on the map by performing transfusion

experiments. he begins his first win with talks just like the english on the left bank in the latin quarter of paris. if any of the have visited paris, just imagine it. i have stood there many times in research imagining where these chess pieces are taking place. if you are facing. you're looking at the fountain. you can see the banks. there are these very large buildings facing the river. sean baptiste apartment was in one of those buildings very nearby. so he does these experiments in his home. we have no idea what his wife thought about these. then with some success he moved his experiments public and began doing them on the banks of the river. that is the way you get attention. you make a big announcement. here ye come here he. sunday at 2:00 p.m. i will transfuse a mangy dog with a

healthy dog. come one, alt. you can only imagine that the french elite who again, against transfusion, circulation, what they had to say. they were enraged. so, what is very interesting, john baptiste with his great success with darts to size the most important way he's going to make a name for himself is he's going to try to it scoop the english. the english i this close to performing their own human transfusion. so john baptiste says, i'm going to beat him to it. he performs his first transfusion experiment in 1667 on a young beavers boy. we don't know how we get the patient. very likely he paid the parent. the transfused this year in boy with cat's blood and the boy survived. that, in the 17th century, is a major criteria for success. the second transfusion is a

butcher. now, i can't be sure of this, but from what i can tell the first butcher provided the sheep for the young boy was a very colorful man. in fact, after the transfusion he said to mike, are you going to let that lamb go to waste? let me take it. it will be a great dinner for my wife and night. second transfusion of the butcher. yes. sure. he's not sick. he just offers himself up for pay, is transfused and survives. my favorite story is that shortly after the transfusion the transfusion is is walking down the streets of paris, looks into a tavern and sees his butcher. he's going to go tell the butcher of. the butcher is drunk because he sees use all of his armies to buy beer. suddenly he is surrounded by a bunch of other workers to say, trustees make a much as his me.

he says pretty good. i'm going to transfuse somebody else. this is red it's very interesting. he reaches for the most famous man in paris in the 1660's, well-known in the most elite part of town for running around, mentally ill, running around naked, screaming, setting homes on fire. the most illustrious literary elite. but he is also beloved because he had been have valet to a very, very influential lady in this area. he is at once laughingstock, feared, and beloved. believes that if he can transfuse this man successfully he will have been sealed his

name. they pluck because it costs a lot of money to do research. he has a very wealthy benefactor. the puck in off the streets of paris, tie him to a chair, and transfuse them with cat's blood. this is the first time that you really see clear evidence of reaction. he starts to scream. his arm is turning red and getting very hot. he starts to vomit. his head is spinning. they decide to stop. were going to stop the transfusion right away. they shuffle the man off into the servants' quarters. he is more called and happy. he seems cured of his madness. second transfusion goes equally well. again with cat's blood. in fact, the man's wife comes and finds her husband who has been running on the streets and

is bewildered. she says the transfusion is a, what do you do to my husband? he would be beating me, and now he's telling me he loves me. very likely the man was just very sick and didn't have a lot of energy. his wife goes off into her home. a while later and knocked on the door saying my husband is at it again. you need to transfuse and now. he refuses. he goes out and begins the transfusion not long after the man is dead. he is accused of murder. it looks like he is going to be held on murder charges. what is very interesting in this is that there is a court case. he actually says to my didn't do it. the widow is suggesting that there is something in this, and

there was. in the court case they interviewed the widow, neighbors, just about anybody you could think about. was determined that the murderer had happened. it was not from the animals' blood, but he had been poisoned by arsenic. on top of it in the court records is said that three physicians, unnamed physicians were responsible. then the rest of the court case says there will be no further transfusions without the expressed approval of the paris faculty of medicine. that's not going to happen for reasons i told you. they were against it to begin with. so as i started to look through this are realized that most of the historical approaches to this odd case were, thank goodness, blood transfusions did not continue because it was a

mess, dangerous, horrible. i know as somebody who works in the history of medicine that they were doing all different types of surgery's. they were taking bladder stones, cutting into the perineum so deep that you can reach our entire hand it to somebody's body or worse there were doing penile extractions the bladder stones, know as teaser or antisepsis and doing more and more cesarean sections as well. those were done much more frequently than any of these few blood transfusions. that got me started. how in the world did that just be the only answer. i started to dig around to try to figure out who these three unnamed physicians were who were involved. they were hard to find. let me tell you. i couldn't really find them.

i thought to myself, why would somebody be against blood transfusion? it turns out, as you start to look at all of the entire blood transfusion, there is a great fear that by moving animal blood into human brains that somehow or another you were going to alter what it meant to be human. would humans start to bark? would dogs start to reason? now, that could be fascinating for early 17th century, 18th century people. why? they have been traveling. they have been going and discovering land unknown, people's unknown. i can only imagine what the first european might have thought about seeing a giraffe for the first time. all these travelers coming back with stories of see monsters. yes. even coming back with stories of entire villages of people who look like dogs. dog headed man. fascinating, fascinating stories

that were at once fascinating and frightening. sign said the ability to engineer monsters and to some very conservative thinkers that was too frightening and needed to be stopped. now, here's a question i know you are all thinking. why in the world wouldn't they just use human blood? well, it makes a lot of sense that they would reach for animals. the first is that animals are pure. never seen my dark smoke. he barks really loud, but he's not swearing in me. they don't drink, smoke or swear. also earlier medical practices used animal flesh and fluid on a regular basis. if you were sick, feeling overly cold. skewing more toward being phlegmatic.

you would need a raw state. you might even sprinkle some stag testicles, some stag testicles on there. these were common recipes to enhance one's self. the third reason, pure. the second, it was traditional to use nutrition in particular animal flesh influence. the third is that the great french philosopher a man that we all associate with i think therefore i am had another radical way of understanding the human body. that was through mind body dualism. when he speculated that animals and humans were identical in the fact that there were machines. in the thick of the scientific resolution. the science of hydrolysis just now starting, creating barometers. everything you can imagine is now up for grabs and is highly

mechanical, highly mechanistic. animals and humans are identical and function as police and pipes. the only difference is that humans can speak, reason, and have a soul. and the card speculates that the soul is not in the body. the soul is not corporeal. that makes a lot of sense. that is also. so in the 16 twenties, 1630's. mind body dualism argument begins in the 1630's to remove toward infusions, experiments in the 1630's, and then we are in the thick of transfusion experiments in the 16 fifties. so, if he is right taking animal blood, pure animal blood and moving it into the human body is something like changing the oil of your car. no big deal. what if he's wrong? what if it had long been

speculated and discussed and also written down biblically, what of the soul was actually in the blood itself? and that was a very frightening thing to many conservative positions. so frightening that they would resort to terror murdering a transfusion is patient and setting him of of these charges. it worked. but jazz fusion was banned. it would not be started up for another hundred and 50 years. in my research it was -- to figure out why somebody who would want to do this. i researched it and researched it. it is a rough life. i had to get to paris and rome and london. i even made an argument to get to dublin because there was a great collection of protestant french doctors in dublin to at a

specialized library. i did a lot of travel for this. each time i thought i was getting closer and closer. the men who tried to murdered a transfusion patients. i began to disappear because i thought there is just no way. every time i thought i had the person i couldn't pin it on them. in the end these guys are dead, but there is a responsibility you have in accusing long did people of murder. that is still a huge accusation. so i, started to give up because i had the motive. i just could not find for sure who did it. so i decided to give up on the project because i could not figure out who did it. many years of my life. i aide a lot of great french food and had french wine. and so i was in my study in

national and i was doing to put away my notes. amended during my notes. i spend a couple of weeks saying, oh, yeah. taipan the document, no. it. i'm getting ready to put the project away. for anyone who has done archival research you know that the last few days of being in an archive are really very because there are some many things you want to look after manuscripts and books. in a you can't get anywhere else. you only have a couple of more days. even though spending a fortune, of fortune in reproduction cost. i see people nodding. and then what happens in the libraries, it can take forever to get them, six, eight weeks. two months. as i was putting away my documents i saw a stack. it was from a french library. i open it up. oh, yeah. gap. and remember when i was.

i ended up coming across a letter from a lawyer a parliament which is the french equivalent of the supreme court pretty much saying i should not be writing this letter. the chance fees in this to has every reason to fear for his life. person x and person white should be ashamed of what they did to try to stop transfusion i believe desperately that transfusion should be allowed to continue. i had -- i looked at it, read it again. what? what? has been another couple of months going back again, going back again to france, pulling as many things as i could about these people his names i had seen before in anti transfusion is the king of letters, the treatises. it turns out they were sitting out in the open.

once i have their names. vigilante's are rarely shy. the names were not known to history, but their documents were sitting there essentially to pay off the world that they had done it and proudly so. and i don't know about you, but when i meet others i am interested. after i was absolutely sure i had looked under every stone and felt confidence that i was able to find them, i thought, this is more than i can handle. i hopped in the car and was going to go to the ymca. i tried to call my husband. he picks up the phone, and i start to cry. i say, i found them. you okay? i found them. what? what? i found the killers. what killers? what are you talking about? the transfusion killers. he laughed and he said, you just solved it 350 year-old colt case.

that's what i did. so it was this whole project was a wild ride and a fascinating ride for me. one of the things that is interesting to me is that there are so many different residences. so the modern residence to conclude a bit, to put the past and a contemporary context so that we can understand why the past is so important and how the past and actually help guide us as we move into our own moments of scientific revolution. i knew in 2006 before i found the killer is that i wanted to write this book in a way that would be compelling not just to an academic audience but also to a generator. interested in scientific revolution and the way that history matters. 2006 george w. bush did a state of the union address in which he surprised a lot of people in the scientific community saying he

is calling for prohibition of human animal hybrids. it came out of the blue. and i thought, that's weird. there was a letter to it that sounded an awful lot like the rhetoric of my 17th century. so i spend a lot of time in the months after word watching the cultural sphere. i realized that many of the responses that i was hearing -- of course bush was talking about closing, a human embryo of schools themselves research, all of those issues surrounding genetic research and the fears that we will do something to the human species. i heard in the cultural sphere that same type of response. this is horrible and must be stopped. i also heard other people saying, particularly my science friends. we have been doing interspecies research for a very long time at

different gradations, whether we are doing the grafting of pig heart valves, knockout mice, the mies actually have human diseases. all these different types of animals human experiments. then the fun part was looking at all of the fun people on the internet doing these wacky things. these are little bit creepy. pays nursing human babies. those types of things. i realize those types of illustrations i were seeing were identical to the same types of interspecies monsters that we saw in the 17th century. when i started to write this book and wanted to ask three important questions. wanted to use the past test three important questions about where we are now.

the first is, should society limit our science? the relationship between science and society is so precarious. the second question, if so, at what cost? i can't help but to think, were transfusions to have continued and would we have had transfusion much earlier, could we have determined blood type much earlier had the response to transfusion not stopped it in its tracks? because the experiment in the 1900's was simple, taking a little bit of blood from one colleague and a little from another. this blood a coagulated blood be? and then he ended up being able to do some graphs. he determines that the first initial blood types, it was not a hard experiment, and he did not the dots of tools. that is a moot question. history cannot answer those

questions. lives have been saved? i don't know. live said it lost? probably. the third question, what should the relationship of science and society be? should society put limits on science? the third question, if we are looking 350 years later at how initial culture responses were to blood transfusion, something that is complicated but in most circles and problematic. how will history, how will people 50 years, 100 years, 150 years be looking at us as we are trying to come to terms with our stance toward things like human embryo of the stem cell research clowning. these may seem to be very different technologies. in the end those technologies are not all that different and

the philosophical realm. each one gets that the question of what it means to be human, what it means to not be human, and in the case of human embryologist and so research, when does the idea of humanness begin? and all of those questions, when we look at the history of medicine and the way society has tried to come to terms with different moments of scientific innovation and revolution, those are lasting questions that will continue long after. i would love to hear your questions. [applause] [applause] >> three and related questions. >> right. >> are they talking about yellow bile? was that the humor of this plane?

was that the yellow bile? >> you know, they weren't always associated specifically with organs. flam -- in fact, blood itself contained all of the humors. i think i am reluctant to do that unless i have a good and apology dictionary. and not really sure how to answer that. i will look it up until you for sure. >> it definitely has to be related. melancholy, melancholy which is an early term for depression is associated with having too much black bile. if somebody is choleric, you're leaning toward one over the other. so very, very. the expression was released related to humorous.

i wanted to take more and see exactly when it was first used. >> lincoln referred to the hypo, hypo being hypochondria referring to fed referring to liver and an excess of bile. was that the origin? >> of course. that whole idea continues well into the 19th century. in fact, george washington, as we know, was but let. very possibly historians would say that was it really his third infection, the infection or was it the fact that he was but let like crazy? and another interesting thing. i opened the book with this. after washington died in 79 there was speculation the day after that, perhaps, he could be revived with animal blood. a family said, interesting idea, but no.

let's let him rest in peace. >> there were going to try to warm them up. eighth the body and warm them up to get the blood moving and then transfused them with animals blood. this is not something that is just located in 17th century, and the advent of the discovery of blood circulation does not mean that the he moral theory is gone by any means. it will continue well into the 17th century and, again, especially with the humorous and as you are suggesting, whole range of ways of describing the human body and also describing human character. >> i could keep on going. i'll limit myself to one more question and turn it over to other people. what is your take on the origin? you mentioned cesarean section. what is your take on the origin of that term? was it that julius caesar was actually born that way?

his mother's belly and uterus was cut open? he was expected that way? is there some other? i have heard that is controversial. >> absolutely controversial. >> what are your thoughts on the origin of that term? >> i can tell you, it was thought since antiquity that that was, indeed, the way that he was born. did that mean that cesarean sections were consistently performed from that time. >> reporter: know. the first or actually performed in the very early 17th century or claimed to have been performed. how wonderful he was. such a great degree that one of his patients had the operation by times and would be very happy to show the world her scars. i doubt that he performed those. but beginning in the early 17th century, the discussions

about cesarean section began. we start to see by mid 17th century not frequently, but some times and then we are seeing it not as a regular procedure that recede. by the 18th-century they're performing them on a semi regular basis. it's interesting that we go from caesar to the 17th century and to my knowledge don't have documented evidence that it was performed and all with consistency. >> the roman? >> absolutely. >> louis the 14th wanted to. >> you know. the question is, since we have the roman antiquity reference, is that now part and parcel to 17th century life in france? yes. absolutely. if he looked at the literature we are deep in the neoclassical

in which they are recuperating text and moving them into theaters. he take a look to the architecture of the time as well, neoclassical, classical models of architecture. to what degree with that have something to do with cesarean section? duffel, but it gives us a good idea of why the french were so beholden to models of antiquity in the madison. models of antiquity actually dominated all and permeated much of french 17th century life. not so much in england. the english had more of a tradition. sport, i would even say, pushing back against tradition where is the french are coming out of all of their religious wars of the late 16th century. there is a tradition in catholic france a pushing against those who would push against tradition.

i think that is an interesting question of classical models and france and the relationship between the body and culture. >> blood being the sole with a propensity for bloodletting. it contains the sold. >> that is a really good question. i don't know how to answer that. i really do not know how to answer that. i'll have to think on it. >> actually, i see a hand back there. >> what was it like to find the killers? >> it was exciting. really scary for because as i mentioned, i was accusing people of one of the worst things that you can do. i can tell you. how old you?

>> seven. >> my daughter was seven when i started this book. she is now about ten and a half. when i started really writing this book she was very interested. the only thing is she would go into my study at home. i would have all of these dissection manuals. they did all types of things. they probably to some people. they would do skoal drilling. my daughter would walk into my study and go, mom, i'm so glad your a writer. i'm so proud of you. would you feel the same way? >> maybe. >> maybe. >> any cases of hemophilia and transfusion, you know, to replace someone when they believe they just leave and go stop?

i mean, i'm sure it has a role in history of medicine and history in general. did you come across in the case is? >> interestingly in the early transfusions that does not seem to be the case. it was more to one as pure experiments or in the case of the mentally ill man, it was thought that mental illness, again, going to the humorous, mental illness was the result of overly heated blood. the blood would get too hot, vapors would rise to the brain in trouble a mind. it was thought that if they move the more pure cooling animal blood into mentally ill people -- there was another transfusion in england at about the same time. there would be it will to calm them down. it was never the idea that they could replace blood. early speculation was that perhaps what you could do is be

intravenously people who were not able to eke. by taking back up blood transfusion in the 19th century, especially for that. in 1818 at the hospital in london was an obstetrics doctor. seeing his patients bleed out, hemorrhaging after childbirth. he was lamenting that something had to be done. he wondered, would it be possible then to use transfusion to replace the new mother's blood? he did a few experiments, not a lot, in which he used husband's blood our staff members but, and they were not highly successful. what is very interesting is that after that people started wondering, could we then start doing transfusion? over the next 80 or 90 years is really fascinating all the different experiments, trying to deal with the fact the blood coagulates quickly. there were taking blood and things like, you know, i don't

know, things that you make cakes with to see if they could be it. grab stuff on it. they were putting all different types of chemicals into the blood to see if they could get some coagulating. fast forward. by 1900 the discovery of blood types. 1914 they discover sodium citrate which keeps the blood from coagulating. that allows a very important innovation. they can start delivering blood remotely. but for what they would have to do is there would have to be patients hooked up to patients in any type of celebrity type of device or some positions were actually stitching veins and arteries together to do the transfusion from donor to recipient to be able to do this.

1914. world wars. that allows, particularly in spain for them and the spanish civil war for them to be able to collect blood. they know about blood types be put it in glass flasks and deliver it to the battlefield. from there there is the thought of creating the first blood bank first in leningrad in the 1630's and then cooked kidney hospital. so it is an excellent question. interestingly my thought is as she said, the whole idea of trying to stop hemorrhaging is what i think starts this shift to modern success stories of blood transfusion. >> one of the things that i think, we look back at historical health practices, we can see that there were resistant to seeing some paradigm shift.

but, i mean, we really any different? and so what kind of things did you see in your research? i don't really know the question i'm asking. it seems like people nell -- did they know that they didn't -- that they didn't know? did they think any of? >> i really like that question a lot. and it is really one that is hard to articulate. first, it is tempting as someone who works in history to want to read the foreword narrative and say, look, as they did know. we have the answer. or look how close they were, if only they knew. we found the answer. i would say that what is important in every time is an excessive humility. realize that just as they were trying to master the secrets of

nature and the body, they recognize just how hard that was. that didn't keep them from plowing forward just as we are still doing the same thing. we have to be humble. how is history going to judge just? we have to be humble. so much more that we don't know. am attaching a little bit on that question? okay. it's hard to articulate. >> yes. >> first i just want to say, great talk. i love the fact that your pictures to work. you'd tell such an evocative story. it was great. even though these classic images are a joy to see as well. so i love the way this worked. but i think my question is getting at the popularization of science or maybe science and medicine.

you sort of touched on it throughout your talk. i am wondering about this idea of public exhibition of transfusion were thinking of other things that were done similarly. the displays of botany or electricity and things of that. soda of opening the window into the general public or the salon going public or something like that. france or if you could think about that historically a bed or maybe even today. how we sort of consumed this and come to terms with the scientific or medical developments. >> that is precisely one of the things i am interested in. in the 17th century and in france, know more about france and i do england, the spectator

aspects of science. >> electronic of theaters are located in medical schools were the most part. that standard medical anatomic we have the cadaver in the center. it was more of a closed space, more of the lead space. it is true that when we move into a scientific revolution, the 17th century and definitely in to the indictment of the 18th-century the educated elite want very much to begin to participate in science. fascinated. the king's garden would have regular dissections that women of the higher class's, salon culture, a very educated women would meet and discuss literature. they would do field trips over to the king's garden to take a look at what's going