The Heart Healers

Quotes

"Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person." Death of a Salesman

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Wishing will not; Talent will not; Genius will not; Education will not; Persistence is like a Genie that creates a magical force in your life." Lucas Remmerswaal

"In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs. Not the man who finds a grain of new and precious quality but to him who sows it, reaps it, grinds it and feeds the world on it." Francis Darwin

Paradigm Shift

This was a fun read. The subtitle of the book describes the "misfits, mavericks and rebels" who advanced cardiovascular care to where it is today. I had no idea how true that had to be.

One of my favorite threads that spanned the stories told was how the scientific community, so proud of its advances at the time, had such religiously held (but totally incorrect) dogmas about the heart. Beliefs like "you can't physically touch the heart without it dying", that eventually required a surgeon to catheterize himself through the arm and x-ray himself on stage to show a crowd that he was just fine. That's after he had to tie a nurse down to get access to the supplies (it was a complicated story).

This and other books on the history of scientific discovery have amazed me with just how dogmatic the scientific community is. We could all learn something from Adam Grant's book Think Again.