Heart A History

<h3>The Spark of Life Fount of Emotion House of the Soul</h3><p>Sandeep Jauhar's book Heart A History tells the story of the little-known journey to understand and heal the human heart our most vital organ. It has been bound up in our deepest feelings that it can physically change shape when we experience emotional trauma.</p><ul> <li>Jauhar braids together historical episodes his own work and family's history of heart disease with gripping scenes from the operating theatre.</li> <li>He introduces us to Daniel Hale Williams the African American doctor who performed the world's first open heart surgery in Gilded Age Chicago.</li> <li>He tells the story of C. Walton Lillehei who connected a patient's circulatory system to a healthy donor's paving the way for the heart-lung machine.</li> <li>He also tells of Wilson Greatbatch who saved millions by inventing the pacemaker by accident.</li> <li>Jauhar confronts the limits of medical technology arguing that future progress will depend more on how we choose to live than on the devices we invent.</li></ul><p>Affecting engaging and beautifully written Heart A History takes the full measure of the only organ that can move itself.</p>