Book Review: The Matter of the Heart

The Matter of the Heart: A History of Heart Surgery in Eleven Operations
Thomas Morris
Medicine

What's astounding about heart surgery is how quickly it became routine. Thomas Morris opens with a scene in World War II in which a bevy of top-flight surgeons are absolutely agog to watch Dr. Dwight Harken remove some shrapnel from a living heart. At the time, my uncle would have been about twelve. Last year he had a pacemaker implanted, then went out for lunch.

It's not just the technical difficulties. In Morris's eyes, at least, the heart had a uniquely long-lingering mystique. Even into the twentieth century, many surgeons seem to have regarded tampering with it as faintly sacrilegious. The Matter of the Heart is a more-or-less sequential overview of how the transformation.

It's mostly a smooth journey, well worth the read if you're not too squeamish. Morris doesn't entirely solve the conundrum of how to manage a large and overlapping cast of characters: the eleven operations he picks out are all children of many parents, and it's sometimes hard to remember whether Dr. Soandso appeared in a previous chapter or not. Also, while Morris's explanations are outstanding, the book suffers from a dreadful lack of illustrations. There are exactly two, in the opening pages--one of the heart's exterior, one of its interior. Would it have killed the publisher to have put in a couple of diagrams showing exactly what each operation entailed?

That said, this is inherently dramatic stuff, and Morris does a good job with it. He doesn't go overboard, thankfully--this isn't a TV drama--but then he doesn't have to. He also does a good job with exploring the many false starts, blind alleys, partial successes, and setbacks that have led us to where we are today. Finally, he's got some fascinating peeks at where we might be going tomorrow.

There's one thing I should stipulate, though. Everything that the surgeons have accomplished, they've accomplished through extensive animal experiments, mostly on dogs. If that thought makes you squirm, don't read this book. For my part, I understand why it had to be done that way; I can't argue with the results; I have every intention of benefiting from the results if necessary. Nonetheless, if that aspect of the book doesn't make you at least a little heartsick, there's something wrong with you.