Spare Parts

March 15, 2022
A French embroiderer, two-headed dogs, saints Cosmas and Damian, sausage skin, and Charles Lindbergh all have a place in Craddock's distinctive history of transplantation. His time line tracks skin grafts for reconstructing mutilated noses (resulting from trauma or syphilis), blood transfusions (animal to human first, then human to human), the initial successful kidney transplant, and the first heart transplant. Tooth transplants (typically extracted from poor people or children and received by members of the upper class) were in vogue during the late 1700s, signifying ""the first exchanges of body parts to become heartless financial transactions."" Craddock summarizes other advances in medical science, including the ability to suture blood vessels, an understanding of blood typing, and the development of powerful immunosuppressive drugs. Ethical challenges and some transplant consequences are raised, such as issues of identity and metamorphosis, the donor-recipient relationship, and how the increasing need for transplantable organs outstrips the available supply. Craddock concludes, ""transplants have become routine miracles."" Indeed, organ transplants save lives while also altering the way we comprehend the human body and how we accept this remarkable form of sharing.

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March 11, 2022

Craddock (surgery, University Coll., London) presents a fascinating history of transplant medicine. The first recorded skin graft took place in India in the 6th century BCE, indicating that the procedure is probably older than that. The first "modern" transplants of skin and noses began in the 16th century in Italy, when cutting off noses was a common punishment. The procedure was done in secret by two families until a surgeon fooled them into showing him the technique. The idea of interfering with nature concerned religious scholars; one early surgeon addressed the problem by emphasizing that the transplant returned the face to its God-created condition. Transplant medicine moved forward in fits and starts through the Renaissance, as the details of the circulatory system were uncovered. During the 18th century, tooth transplants became a status symbol for wealthy people; teeth were often bought from impoverished youngsters. It was not until blood typing was developed in 1901 and vascular surgery techniques improved that major organ transplantation could be considered. Craddock provides entertaining details of the lives involved along the way. VERDICT This fascinating and lively medical history will appeal to lay readers and anyone interested in the history of medicine.--Rachel Owens

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May 2, 2022
Historian and filmmaker Craddock debuts with an accessible and wide-ranging account of the development of skin, blood, tooth, and organ transplantation from 1550 to the modern day. Tracing the evolution of transplant surgery from rudimentary skin grafts to artificial hearts and stem cells, Craddock profiles practitioners including 17th-century French surgeon Jean-Baptiste Denis, who performed a “live blood transfusion” between two dogs at the foot of the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in 1667, and examines how mythology, including the Chinese tale of a “brave but stupid man” who receives a new heart from a judge of the underworld, influenced real-world views on transplantation. Amid the toe-curling descriptions of vivisected dogs and doomed trial runs at human-to-human tooth transplants are hopeful and inspiring accounts of how farmers and embroiderers shared their knowledge with medical practitioners and the roles played by sausage skins and spinach leaves in the development of skills and materials required for organ transplants. Thoroughly researched and appealingly digressive, this fascinating medical and cultural history sheds light on what it means to be human. Illus.