Very informative book about the history of a human heart. I appreciated the part of the book that touched on how our medicine has advanced and how much we still have to learn about the mysterious organ and its intricacies. Very beautifully written.

I loved this book!! I am someone who really enjoy reading books that are deep dives into specific topics because the author is always so passionate about what they're writing, and this book is no exception. Given the title, I was expecting to learn mostly about the history of anatomy and cardiology, but I was pleased to also learn about the cultural significance of the heart and I also just learned a lot about my own body, as a heart-having person. I am also a sucker for pictures and there were plenty in here. If I could change one thing, it would be making the art section longer, but otherwise I was very happy with it!

I am conflicted about this book. It has some really interesting points... but it also makes what I regard as some silly, and some egregious, historical mistakes. The author isn't a trained historian but he is writing about history so it really needed to not have those problems.

So. Firstly, in the timeline at the start, it says that someone 'discovered' the stethoscope. Uh, no. Maybe this is something that will be corrected before publication, but my copy doesn't say this is an uncorrected proof. Minor, I know, but annoying. Also minor but annoying is saying that the Greeks "began practising medicine around 700 BCE" (p47), because I'm pretty sure that people were medicating themselves and setting bones in the place we call Greece well before that date, even if they did see illness as divine punishment; Asclepius exists as a god before that time.

Less minor and more than annoying is Figueredo's insistence on the term "the Dark Ages", which he seems to use to cover the entirety of what is more usually called the Middle Ages. I reject the term 'Dark Ages' for any period - it's completely outdated and ridiculous - and I don't remember ever seeing it used to refer to Europe beyond about 1000 CE? Certainly not after the 1200s. But on p26 he says Europe "fell into the Dark Ages for a thousand years" and that there was "a prohibition on scientific discovery". I'm not going to say that the Church was throwing its arms open to science in this time, but at the same time - it's just wrong to say that 'science' (whatever we mean by that) was in abeyance for a millennium in Europe. He also talks about the fall of the Roman Empire being in 476 CE, which is one of those superbly Western-oriented statements that must make historians of Byzantium tear their hair out.

One of the good things about the history part of this book is that it is not entirely Euro-centric. There's discussion about how Hindu writings viewed the heart (around whether the heart was the seat of the soul etc), and quite a lot about Islamic views too. This latter actually leads to one of the other annoying statements, which is that without Islamic translations of ancient texts "the Renaissance in Europe would have begun with no past knowledge to build upon" (p72). Which is hilarious because it's horse/cart: without those texts there IS no Renaissance. ANYWAY. He does give credit to the Islamic scholars so that's excellent. There's also some discussion of Mesoamerican attitudes, too, although perhaps a little too much focus on human sacrifice (which I thought was a bit more doubted these days, but I am definitely not an expert in that area).

My final annoyance with the historical aspect of the book is a linguistic one. There's not very much discussion - or even acknowledgement - of the difficulties of translation around such words as 'soul' or 'mind' (as distinct from 'that lump of stuff in your head'). Again, not the author's area, but when you're discussing cultural differences between whether emotions are seated in the heart or the brain, these things matter. So I found that disappointing. And this was only made worse by the start of the chapter about the word itself (chapter 28), where he states that the Indo-European word itself derives from the Greek and the Latin... which is another horse/cart problem, given how much earlier the Indo-European is. Again, maybe that will be fixed before publication, because it's pretty egregious.

All of this makes it sound like I didn't like the book, which isn't completely true. I do think it's an interesting overview of the place of the heart in ancient societies, and coming into the European medieval period. I think that the modern sections are fascinating, which realistically makes sense given that the author is a surgeon and therefore the modern science of the heart is, actually, his area. He writes well, and in a manner that is accessible for the non-doctor. I had no idea about the modern understanding of the heart-brain connection, or that there are neurone in the heart, so all of that was fascinating - the idea that the heart is a little brain is wild!

Maybe it's mean, but I think the historical aspect needed to be treated a bit more seriously. If you want the book to be seen as a significant contribution to understanding the place of the heart in human culture, it needs to be as faultless as possible. This could be that, but it's not quite there.

This books covers the historical, cultural, philosophical, and medical history of the heart. It is concisely written and easy to read and understand. I learned many new things. I think the chapter about the future of the heart could have included more information because it seemed more like a conclusion rather than a chapter. It answered most of my questions and I found the book to be a page turner because of its good pacing.

"The Curious History of the Heart" by Vincent M. Figueredo is both intriguing and informative. He shares the cultural history of the heart as well as anecdotes, science, folklore. Highly recommended for poets, philosophers, and anyone who is interested in learning more about the most important organ in the body. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

The Curious History of the Heart by Vincent M. Figueredo is a fascinating book about the heart.
In this book, Figueredo covers many heart related topics. He goes over the history of knowledge of it, he goes over its symbolism over the centuries, he goes over how it and heart related illnesses work. He even discusses the etymology of many idioms about it.
A lot of this book was good. I like how much it covers, rather than just being a history book or just a science book. Figueredo also explains some things well. While at times it made me feel like a child, it was understandable. The greatest strength of this book was the science in the latter part of the book. As a cardiologist, Figueredo knows the heart, and this really shone through. I found these parts more interesting and easier to read.
However, there were many bad parts. Despite his many sources, there was some historical information that Figueredo got wrong, such as saying that there was no scientific progress during the "Dark Age" of Europe. While this is clearly a generalization, I think it could have been less absolute. My biggest issue was with the writing. A lot of information is repeated, almost word for word, which makes for a very confusing and annoying read. I also found that many of the sentences were short and the same size, which made the book seem drier and harder to read than it would be otherwise.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about all aspects of the heart in one book. However, if they are looking for a book about the history, I would supplement this book with another as well.

Quick, answer this question without Googling: which organ did we think was the seat of emotions, cognition, and even the soul for most of the history of humanity? If your answer was: the brain, you need to read books like this one. If you answered: the heart, you deserve a treat for being so good at trivia.

For us in the modern era, with all the knowledge and high-res imaging we have of the brain, it's hard to envision any other organ than this being the chief one, the headquarters, the important hub that controls and manages the rest of the body. But up till the 17th century, the heart had the position the brain holds now. And it hasn't lost it, not entirely.

Think of our language. Do you say "I love you with all my brain"? No, you love with all your heart. So many words and expressions about emotions and feelings and cognition still place the heart at the centre: heartless, heartwarming, hard-hearted, heartthrob, heartbreak, heartfelt, heartache, cold-hearted, disheartened, softhearted, heartsick, openhearted, kindhearted, halfhearted, stouthearted, chickenhearted, heavy-hearted, wholeheartedly, fainthearted . . . Metaphorically and symbolically, the heart remains King of the Organs today. When we point at ourselves to say "me," we don't point to the head; we point to the chest, where the heart is.

In this fascinating book, Dr Figueredo, an experienced cardiologist, tells the history of how the heart came to be regarded so highly for so long and why it's time to reconsider its current role as a mere pump with nothing else to it than a complicated mechanism to keep blood flowing around the body. In five well-organised chapters with subheaders and neatly divided by topic, he starts with the view in Classical Antiquity that was shaped majorly by Egyptian and Greek physicians, always keeping in mind that whilst this does mention other cultures like the Mesopotamian, Chinese, Mesoamerican tribes, Islam, etc., this is mainly focused on the West and Western medicine as well as the cultures that influenced the West's ideas and scientific theories on the heart. In Antiquity, the mainstream theory was cardiocentrism, which posited that the heart was where emotions and cognition originated, and where the soul inhabited, whilst the brain was just a mucus-producing organ. Later in Antiquity, there appeared cerebrocentrism, which gave the brain the place of originator of emotions and cognition. Hippocrates was the star of the cerebrocentrists and Aristotle of the cardiocentrists, a scientific dispute the latter won in the long run because his theories, elaborated on and perfected by the Romans and disseminated by the Catholic Church after the Fall of Rome, became the standard.

That was the most fascinating chapter for me personally. Then came the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which Figueredo deals with in the second chapter, talking about the progress made on the study of the heart, which mostly had to do with understanding its functions and physiology better thanks to more careful dissections, greater anatomical understanding and more accurate description of its physiology. The most interesting parts here are about the Renaissance, when artists had to go to dissections by physicians to understand anatomy better to paint or sculpt the human body accurately, or even performed the dissections themselves. Leonardo da Vinci was one such artist that went to dissections and drew the human anatomy accurately; he's credited with being the first one to detect and describe atherosclerosis (cholesterol plaque hardening the heart's arteries). Like him, other artists did the same, which probably accounts for the beautiful and often wildly accurate art from the Renaissance.

But, this chapter is also where the more inaccuracies are. Not anatomical nor scientific, no, I have nothing to reproach the book for in that regard because it's written by someone who knows its subject inside and out, and far better than me, too. It's the historical inaccuracies that bothered me. Some minor, like the mistake of calling Chaucer "Gregory" when his name was Geoffrey, and some more significant like that scientific progress "stopped for a thousand years." I'm sorry, but this is a myth that's repeated over and over with little evidence if any, and so pervasive that it's pop culture knowledge everywhere and never challenged. No, scientific progress didn't just disappear when Rome fell and then magically reappeared in the Renaissance. That's not how history works, any history buff knows that. And that's not how scientific progress works either, and as a scientist, the author should've known. Scientific progress can slow down for a variety of reasons, sources like papers and laboratory logs and libraries can be destroyed, there might be little progress in one scientific field and impressive leaps of progress in another, etc., plus reputable historians have been saying for long that the Middle Ages weren't "dark" and that yes, there was scientific progress during the Middle Ages, more in number and quality than average readers (and most scientists with no formation in history) might be aware of. And besides, it's so easy-peasy and neat to lay the corpse at the feet of the Catholic Church, repeating the whole Galileo affair (which wasn't even during the Middle Ages and had politics involved that's conveniently ignored) as gospel. This book literally says the lack of scientific progress for a millennium was the Catholic Church's fault, which is an extraordinary claim and a very questionable one, but not new nor started by Figueredo, who's only repeating it (but in other parts of the book, he mentions scientific progress that took place in the Middle Ages, so...). The Catholic Church's list of sins is very long and atrocious, and documented enough, but stopping scientific progress for 1,000 years isn't one of them, and anyone that says so needs to at the very least provide very solid evidence, which isn't found here.

Chapters three and four are about the heart in art and facts about the heart and its functions as we know them today. From the former, the history of how we came to have the heart shape we all now use even in emojis came into existence was the most engrossing. The next chapter is basic biology of the heart, the kind you'd learn about in school, informative but not exactly very amenable. You'd think it should've been at the start of the book, but this is chronological and what's known about the heart and the tech & treatments we have now weren't known; it's all meant to show how far we've progressed, though it gets repetitive at times.

The last chapter recovers the book's engrossing factor again, at least for me. It's about modernity and the heart. The topic that caught my eye the most was the argument for a revision of the still common idea that the heart is just a blood pump. Here, Figueredo talks about those cases that make you think that perhaps the ancients had a point with all their theories about the heart being the seat of emotions and the soul, things like that lady who got the heart from a young boy in a transplant and acquired his tastes in food and such, or the phenomenon all elderly care nurses and doctors know well: lifelong couples dying within months, even days, of each other due to "heartbreak." (Incidentally, the heart can, in fact, be physically broken, from stress for example. Rare, but can happen, Dr Figueredo says). This heart-brain connection definitely does need to be reassessed, and hopefully it will as our understanding of how organs are interconnected and not isolated deepens.

It was an enjoyable read overall, I learnt a few things about my little heart.