Heart

A warm welcome back today to James Thambirajah, who is here to talk to me about a book called Heart, a History by Sandip Jauhar. This is, I will confess, a book that I probably might not have picked up voluntarily but James is very persuasive, and I'm really glad I did pick it up, because once I had  I was absolutely compelled to keep reading.  Sandip Jawa is a wonderful writer. He's a cardiologist based in the USA. And this interweaves stories, stories of people, stories of Sandeep's own life, story of patients, stories of his family, with the history of cardiology. The history of cardiology. I didn't really know a huge amount about the history of cardiology it is just fascinating to realise how far we've come over the last 50 or 100 years. I'm really thinking about the bravery of the people who chose to give up everything to explore what they thought might be going on. We've got stories of young doctors passing wires into their own arms and legs in the earliest angiograms. We've got prototype bypass machines being built. We've got people making cardiac pacemakers in their kitchens. It's absolutely incredible, really, really exciting. And I would say I'm not even particularly interested in cardiology, but this is holistic cardiology. This is the history of medicine with some cardiology and some humanity and thinking about hearts in the sense of the heart and soul of a person. It's a cracking read and I've loved talking to James about it.