This is a book about the first transfusion experiments in seventeenth-century France and England. In particular, it focuses on the figure of Jean-Baptiste Denis, who claimed to be the first physician to succeed in transfusing the blood of a calf to a human: a madman, Antoine Mauroy, who became lucid after the transfusion. In the prologue, Tucker explains that this book works at two levels, as a microhistory about Denis, and as a macrohistory about the intellectual, cultural, political, and religious contexts of blood-transfusion experiments of the seventeenth century. It is written like a historical novel for a general readership. I have every admiration for colleagues who try to bring their research topics alive to a general audience. Indeed, Tucker is successful in conveying the hopes and ambitions of the protagonist Denis and his patron Henri-Louis Montmor, the institutional rivalries (the University of Paris, the Royal Society), and the dreams and motivations of others who engaged in or campaigned against blood transfusion experiments. The contrasting parallels drawn between Claude Perrault and Christopher Wren, and Nicolas Fouquet and Denis, whose trials were presided by the Ormessons (father and son, respectively), are effective in pulling together the narrative.

It is an immensely readable book, but this reader winced at the simplifications, elisions, and imaginative filling in of the documentary gaps. Unusually for a book that reads like a historical novel, this book has footnotes, but again, this reader worried that the footnoting was patchy and that it did not always refer to the latest scholarship. This book ends with a brief summary of developments in the early half of the twentieth century that led to the identification of blood types and the introduction of blood transfusion as a result of European wars. Tucker ends with the observation that the number of lives saved and improved by blood transfusion since then is incalculable (225). This upbeat coda, for me, jarred with the questions Tucker asked her readers to keep in mind when reading her book: “Should a society set limits on its science? If so, how, and at what price?” (xxix). Reference to the works of Keith Wailoo would have helped Tucker add caution at the end.

Overall, this is a book that recounts the story of the first blood-transfusion experiments well. Judging from the extracts of reviews on the back cover and first two pages of the book, nonspecialist readers enjoy reading this book. The specialist reader, however, might have a mixed reaction.