FURTHER READING

This is a small and personal selection of the available literature, for the most part written for those without prior medical knowledge. A more extensive bibliography can be found in the notes for each chapter.

Historical Surveys

Cooper, David, Open Heart: The Radical Surgeons Who Revolutionized Medicine (Kaplan Publishing, 2010)

Concentrating on the ‘golden age’ of heart surgery in the 1950s and 1960s, this lively book by a former colleague of Christiaan Barnard includes many vivid anecdotes from the surgeons themselves.

Friedman, Steven G., A History of Vascular Surgery (Blackwell Futura, 2005)

An accessible introduction to cardiac surgery’s sister discipline, including biographical portraits of some of its leading figures.

Richardson, Robert, Heart and Scalpel: A History of Cardiac Surgery (Quiller Press, 2001)

Originally published in 1969, an engagingly written book which provides a detailed account of developments up to and including Barnard’s first transplant.

Shumacker, Harris B., The Evolution of Cardiac Surgery (Indiana University Press, 1992)

The most scholarly history of the discipline, written by a surgeon who himself made several important contributions. Comprehensive but aimed at the specialist, and often dauntingly technical.

Stoney, William S. (ed.), Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery (Vanderbilt University Press, 2008)

A valuable collection of interviews with dozens of the most influential surgeons active between the 1940s and the 1980s.

Westaby, Stephen, and Cecil Bosher, Landmarks in Cardiac Surgery (ISIS Medical Media, 1997)

The bulk of this weighty volume consists of facsimiles of original surgical articles reporting some of the major breakthroughs of the first century of cardiac surgery. These are, however, preceded by a readable and lavishly illustrated historical narrative.

Topics in Cardiac Surgery

Cooper, David, and Robert Lanza, Xeno: The Promise of Transplanting Animal Organs into Humans (Oxford University Press, 2000)

Research has moved on considerably since it was first published, but this book by the leading expert in the field is still worth reading for its lucid explanation of the challenges of xenotransplantation.

DeBakey, Michael E., and Antonio M. Gotto, The New Living Heart (Adams Media Corp, 1997)

A beginner’s guide to the organ and its diseases, co-written by one of the giants of twentieth-century surgery. A wonderfully clear explanation of how the heart works and what can go wrong with it, although some of the clinical information is now out of date.

Fox, Renée C., and Judith P. Swazey, The Courage to Fail: A Social View of Organ Transplants and Dialysis (University of Chicago Press, 1974)

______, Spare Parts: Organ Replacement in American Society (Oxford University Press, 1992)

A pair of influential books by two sociologists who studied the implications of organ transplantation and the artificial heart. They spent considerable time in the hospitals concerned and interviewed many of those involved – and not just the surgeons. The Courage to Fail includes a detailed and even-handed assessment of Denton Cooley’s controversial 1969 artificial heart operation and its consequences.

Jeffrey, Kirk, Machines in Our Hearts: The Cardiac Pacemaker, the Implantable Defibrillator, and American Health Care (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001)

An impressively thorough history of both devices which concentrates on the technological rather than medical aspects of the subject.

Nathoo, Ayesha, Hearts Exposed: Transplants and the Media in 1960s Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

A fascinating analysis of the controversy caused by the first human transplants, exploring how they altered the relationship between the British media and the medical profession.

Wright, Thomas, Circulation: William Harvey’s Revolutionary Idea (Chatto & Windus, 2012)

An engrossing and much-admired account of William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood.

Biography and Memoir

A number of surgeons have written entertaining and revealing (if occasionally partial) accounts of their own work. Barnard’s memoirs are particularly worth reading, and he is often surprisingly frank about his own failings. Bigelow’s two books are clearly written and modestly put his own considerable achievements into context. Thomas Thompson’s Hearts, a bestselling double profile of Cooley and DeBakey written at the height of their feud, is a fine piece of reportage by a writer who spent many months in the company of both men. Wertenbaker’s To Mend the Heart concentrates on the work of Dwight Harken and paints a vivid portrait of the man who launched the modern era of cardiac surgery.

Barnard, Christiaan, The Second Life: Memoirs (Vlaeberg, 1993)

Barnard, Christiaan, and Curtis B. Pepper, Christiaan Barnard: One Life (Howard Timmins, 1969)

Barnard, Marius, and Simon Norval, Defining Moments: An Autobiography (Zebra Press, 2011)

Bigelow, Wilfred G., Cold Hearts: The Story of Hypothermia and the Pacemaker in Heart Surgery (McClelland and Stewart, 1984)

______, Mysterious Heparin: The Key to Open Heart Surgery (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1990)

Cooley, Denton A., 100,000 Hearts: A Surgeon’s Memoir (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, 2012)

Cooper, David, Chris Barnard: By Those Who Knew Him (Vlaeberg, 1992)

Edwards, W. Sterling, Alexis Carrel: Visionary Surgeon (Thomas, 1974)

English, Terence, Follow Your Star: From Mining to Heart Transplants – a Surgeon’s Story (AuthorHouse, 2011)

Favaloro, René G., The Challenging Dream of Heart Surgery: From the Pampas to Cleveland (Little, Brown, 1994)

Forssmann, Werner, Experiments on Myself: Memoirs of a Surgeon in Germany (St Martin’s Press, 1974)

Longmire, William P., Alfred Blalock: His Life and Times (unknown publisher, 1991)

Malinin, Theodore I., Surgery and Life: The Extraordinary Career of Alexis Carrel (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979)

Murray, Gordon, Medicine in the Making (The Ryerson Press, 1960)

Romaine-Davis, Ada, John Gibbon and his Heart-Lung Machine (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991)

Shumacker, Harris B., The Life of John H. Gibbon, Jr., Father of the Heart-Lung Machine (Fithian Press, 1999)

Thomas, Vivien T., Pioneering Research in Surgical Shock and Cardiovascular Surgery: Vivien Thomas and his Work with Alfred Blalock. An Autobiography (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985)

Thompson, Thomas, Hearts: DeBakey and Cooley, Surgeons Extraordinary (Pan Books, 1974)

Wertenbaker, Lael, To Mend the Heart (Viking Press, 1980)