Artificial Hearts

McKellar presents a compelling history of the development of artificial hearts from the 1950s to the present. Her account underscores the tension between the public’s infatuation with and wariness of a controversial technology… McKellar’s engaging, thoroughly documented historical account will appeal to general readers, students, and academic professionals.—J. B. Hagen, Radford University, ChoiceShelley McKellar, a historian of medicine at the University of Western Ontario, offers a detailed study of social, cultural, and economic forces that propelled a series of “seductive devices”: artificial hearts that fell short of expectations.—Jerome Groopman, New York Review of BooksThis book represents a very interesting and complete discussion of very important advances in therapies to save the “sickest of the sick” patients with heart failure, documenting both triumphs and failures, the necessary collaborations, the courageous patients, and innovative outsized physicians and surgeons involved in these efforts and how other therapies such as cardiac transplantation and ventricular assist devices developed as a result of the quest for the artificial heart. Anyone who wants to know where we have been and where we are going in this field should read this book.—Howard J. Eisen, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, American Journal of TransplantationA fine piece of work by a gifted historian of science that will most certainly stand out as a go-to source for those interested in a detailed history of surgical and bioengineering efforts to replace flawed, fleshy human hearts with those of mechanical design.—Lesley A. Sharp, Barnard College and Columbia University, Social History of MedicineThis book is far more than an inward-looking recitation of advance followed by advance. McKellar draws effectively on sociological and anthropological literature to explore the myriad controversies that accompanied the artificial heart’s development. She tells us much about physicians, but also a bit about patients. The technological story is nicely imbedded within a changing social and economic context. And the story is a fascinating one.—Joel D. Howell, University of Michigan, Bulletin of the History of MedicineArtificial Hearts takes its place alongside, and in many respects surpasses, standard history of medical technology monographs … [McKellar’s] historiographical perspective … will establish Artificial Hearts as the definitive text on the subject up to this point.—J.T.H. Connor, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canadian Bulletin of Medical HistoryArtificial Hearts is an excellent contribution to our knowledge about the search for a high-technology solution to end-stage cardiac disease. By grounding that pursuit within a decades-long historical context, Shelley McKellar shows how those undertaking this highstakes endeavour fought for and gained authority, funding and public acclaim in the face of others’ scepticism that an artificial heart might, one day, be the perfect substitute for the real thing.—Helen MacDonald, University of Melbourne, Medical History

Shelley McKellar is the Jason A. Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. She is the author of Surgical Limits: The Life of Gordon Murray and the coauthor of Medicine and Technology in Canada, 1900-1950.