پنج کوارت: تاریخچه‌ای شخصی و طبیعی از خون

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Hemophobes beware: there are five quarts of blood in the human body, and Hayes ( Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir ) pours all of them into this book. A gay man living in San Francisco with an HIV-positive partner, Hayes uses his own encounters with blood's ability to save and destroy lives as a launching point for anecdotes in the larger story of blood. His personal history runs like a river through this book, picking up the flotsam and jetsam of blood lore. He launches into an account of the discovery of blood's components and its function in the body, and meanders through cultural perceptions of blood, from the sacred (the Eucharist) to the profane ( Dracula ). Hayes ranges far beyond red and white blood cells, platelets and plasma, taking readers inside a modern blood bank and to the bedside of a woman with hemophilia; his keen perceptions show how the ancient view of blood as the essence of a person's soul still pervades our modern vocabulary and views on the vital fluid. His sometimes irreverent commentary on misconceptions about blood doesn't shy away from the gruesome, particularly a cringe-inducing description of early blood transfusion techniques. With his strong writing and a unique approach, Hayes satisfyingly addresses this life force. B&w illus. Copyright В© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review Praise for Bill Hayes Five Quarts “A remarkable journey, at once highly erudite and profoundly personal, that leads us through history, religion, science–and our own bodies. Bill Hayes is by turns lyrical, rueful, humorous, questioning, and very moving in this book about himself, about our species, and about our past.” –Perri Klass, M.D. “Bill HayesвЂTMs highly original meditation on blood is finally, also, a graceful and subtle love story.” –Richard Rodriguez, author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America Sleep Demons “A lovely weave of memory and science, great characters and compassionate humor. Insomniacs will love it for the sense of connection and solution, the rest of you (grrr) for its wisdom and wonderful writing.” –Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird “Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, pursues sleep as avidly and lyrically as Nabokov pursued butterflies.” – San Francisco Chronicle “An intelligent, beautifully written book . . . that variously reads like a journey of scientific discovery, a personal memoir, and a literary episode of RipleyвЂTMs Believe It or Not.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A graceful hybrid of a book thatвЂTMs half research treatise and half memoir.” –Entertainment Weekly (EditorвЂTMs Choice) From the Hardcover edition. “We’re born in blood. Our family histories are contained in it, our bodies nourished by it daily. Five quarts run through each of us, along some sixty thousand miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries.” –from Five Quarts In the national bestseller Sleep Demons, Bill Hayes took us on a trailblazing trip through the night country of insomnia. Now he is our guide on a whirlwind journey through history, literature, mythology, and science by means of the great red river that runs five quarts strong through our bodies. Profusely illustrated, the journey stretches from ancient Rome, where gladiators drank the blood of vanquished foes to gain strength and courage, to modern-day laboratories, where high-tech machines test blood for diseases and dedicated scientists search for elusive cures. Along the way, there will be world-changing triumphs: William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood; Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s advances in making the invisible world visible in the early days of the microscope; Dr. Paul Ehrlich’s Nobel-Prize-winning work in immunology; Dr. Jay Levy’s codiscovery of the virus that causes AIDS. Yet there will also be ignorance and tragedy: the widespread practice of bloodletting via incision and the use of leeches, which harmed more than it healed; the introduction of hemophilia into the genetic pool of nineteenth-century European royalty thanks to the dynastic ambitions of Queen Victoria; the alleged spread of contaminated blood through a phlebotomist’s negligence in modern-day California. This is also a personal voyage, in which Hayes recounts the impact of the vital fluid in his daily life, from growing up in a household of five sisters and their monthly cycles, to coming out as a gay man during the explosive early days of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, to his enduring partnership with an HIV-positive man. As much a biography of blood as it is a memoir of how this rich substance has shaped one man’s life, Five Quarts is by turns whimsical and provocative, informative and moving. It will get under your skin. A personal and informative exploration of the history of human blood traces attitudes toward the vital substance, from ancient times, through a Victorian Europe decimated by hemophilia, to today's modern day high-tech laboratories. Writer Hayes is our guide on a whirlwind journey through history, literature, mythology, and science by means of the great red river that runs five quarts strong through our bodies. Along the way, there will be world-changing triumphs: William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood; Dr. Paul Ehrlich's Nobel-Prize-winning work in immunology; Dr. Jay Levy's co-discovery of the virus that causes AIDS. This is also a personal voyage, in which Hayes recounts the impact of the vital fluid in his daily life, from growing up with five sisters and their monthly cycles, to coming out as a gay man during the explosive early days of the AIDS epidemic.--From publisher description