The purpose of this book is simply to share ten months of conversations toward an integral friendship. It is not to define or to illustrate what an Integral friendship between a woman and a man is, because I believe no one yet really knows what would comprise such a friendship. Our purpose is simply to share a year of e-mail exchanges between Head (who apparently experiences life primarily through her intellectual center, her head) and Heart (who apparently experiences life primarily through his emotional center, his heart).
Heather Webb studies medieval notions of the heart to explore the "lost circulations" of an era when individual lives and bodies were defined by their extensions into the world rather than as self-perpetuating, self-limited entities. Drawing from the works of Dante, Catherine of Siena, Boccaccio, Aquinas, and Cavalcanti and other literary, philosophic, and scientific texts, she reveals medieval answers to such fundamental questions as: Where is life located? What does it consist of? Where does it begin? And how does it end? Against the modern idea of the isolated self, the medieval heart provides a model for rethinking the body's relationship to the world it inhabits.
A deeply compelling biography of the pioneering children’s heart doctor Helen Taussig, who helped start heart surgery and became a global force against preventable suffering. In A Heart Afire, Patricia Meisol renders a moving portrait of the indomitable pediatrician and global patient activist Helen Taussig (1898–1986), who famously gathered and publicized evidence linking thalidomide to birth defects, leading to US drug safety laws. Taussig also developed the Blalock-Taussig shunt (along with Alfred Blalock) for infants with congenital heart defects. Spanning Taussig’s childhood in Boston, her struggle with dyslexia, her progressive hearing loss, her research contributions, and the founding of her own fledgling children’s heart clinic, this book chronicles Taussig’s ambition, tenacity, and formidable work ethic. As Meisol shows, Taussig not only saved lives, but also set a bold precedent for other women doctors in the twentieth century, who were largely excluded from medicine. Meticulously researched and intimately told, A Heart Afire is unique in its use of a fifty-year-long campaign by Taussig’s followers for a worthy memorial portrait and shows how views of women doctors have evolved. Meisol reveals Taussig as an authentic American hero, one who embodies the Emersonian ethic of developing oneself, following the processes of nature, and serving the public. A fiercely independent thinker, Taussig infused herself and her ideas into the medical culture, paving the way not only for other professional women but also for patients then and now to advocate for themselves. Offering an indispensable look at health care as a universal human right, A Heart Afire is a beacon and a blueprint for creating a more just and compassionate world of medicine.
