Ingenious Pursuits

I’m not sure how I feel about the way the material is presented. I can’t decide if it would have been better to go through the material chronologically across time or by subject, as Jardin did. It seemed like it got confusing and jumbled because the same people kept showing up in different chapters and it was a little unclear as to who was doing what at what time. Although, writing it chronologically could have been just as confusing because you would be jumping around in topic instead of by people. There really doesn’t seem to be any perfect way of presenting the material because there is so much of it to discuss. It would be very difficult to write it without getting confusing at all. I did appreciate the “cast of character’s” section in the back of the book. That seemed to point to Jardin realizing that the book could get confusing so she used that to sum up to book incase the reader missed something.

I was shocked that Hooke tried to put himself in the air pump. I’m not sure if they had realized that humans needed air to survive or not, but if they had I’m not sure why he would have put himself in something that they designed to evacuate air for the chamber. He was lucky that it didn’t work properly when he was in it.

I’m also surprised there weren’t more fatalities associated with the blood transfusion experiments, mostly because they were transferring blood from sheep to humans. I was impressed that they were able to develop techniques for it. With everything we know now about having to match blood types in humans the fact they were able to cross blood in different species without killing anyone really, is impressive…or just lucky. I’m also intrigued by the fact that the people who were experimented on reported feeling better after their transfusions. I wonder if this might have been more of their minds playing tricks on them, having them convinced that the transfusion would cure them of their issues, while in realty it probably should have had some pretty negative side effects.