Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood

Chapter 1 was a bit rambling and seemed more like an Introduction, but the following chapters were tighter focused and absolutely fascinating. Get a glass of wine, sit in your comfiest chair, and enjoy this fact-packed, easily-readable, leisurely tome. There are memorable images and colorful characters, abundant trivia, and sparkly-eyed humor if you take the time to savor what you are reading. The author writes in a way that made it hard for me to put the book down. Around any corner there could be, at turns, a poignant moment offset by a blunt, even brutal, statement. I learned, I was entertained, I delighted, and was repulsed. I was recommending this to my friends and acquaintances before I reached the end of Ch. 2. This is the best show more kind of reading experience and, admittedly, I enjoy these types of non-fiction works over fiction any day. Will be checking out other topics from this author, and obtaining the official published version.

[My honest review comes as a result of winning a free ARC from LibraryThing Early Reviewers]. show less

I had previously read another of George's books, on the international shipping industry, and was excited for that sweeping approach to the topic of human blood. I did learn a whole lot, including why some blood products in some places are sold vs. donated, and how through the world wars we came to understand the power of transfusions. Unavoidably icky in some parts, though, and I felt like the chapters might have been better as standalone essays, as they didn't really add up to anything more than Knowledge About Blood.

The first chapter of Nine Pints jumps about quite a bit: donating blood, Odysseus in Hades, Lance Armstrong’s blood doping, Medusa, blood libel, heart rate and blood types. A visit to a blood processing facility reveals some odd facts such as women’s plasma, because of hormones, is often green rather than yellow like men’s. Then it’s off to a hospital in India where relatives are expected to donate blood to replace blood given to family members.

The second chapter settles down with everything you ever wanted to know about a single slimy subject—leeches. George covers their historic use in medicine, how they used to be gathered and visits a modern leech supplier. The next chapter presents a discussion of voluntary versus paid show more blood donation and the beginning of the Emergency Blood Transfusion Service during World War II. All sorts of things were in short supply so modified milk bottles were used for storage and converted ice cream vans were used to transport the blood to hospitals. George also discusses hemophilia and Factor VIII and the efforts to prevent transmission of hepatitis, HIV and CJD (mad cow disease).

Just over half the population has an intimate connection with blood but menstruation taboos are almost universal. Women in Nepal must spend part of each month in a cramped menstrual hut because they are considered untouchable. The huts are worse than animal sheds and dangerous: snake attacks can be fatal and there are the “drunken men who conveniently forget about untouchability when it comes to rape.” It is well known that many girls in underdeveloped countries drop out of school when they reach puberty because they don’t have access to feminine hygiene supplies. I did not know that at this age some of those girls turn to prostitution, not to support a drug habit, but just to be able to afford sanitary napkins. Women in developed countries, of course, can afford to purchase such necessities but they are often taxed, sometimes at the luxury level (20% in the UK). George also mentions that many women’s prisons restrict access to sufficient feminine hygiene products forcing inmates to freebleed.

While George covers the money and medicine of the subtitle I would have liked to have learned more about blood itself and how it functions in the body. She does, however, in the last chapter, include vampires, young blood treatment to combat aging, Jehovah’s Witnesses and their objection to transfusions and the possibility of creating synthetic blood. The book has many interesting facts and is written for the layperson. When finished it will include Notes and an Index. show less

This book was a series of essays in which each essay dealt with blood or some medical issue with blood. This format made for easy and interesting reading. The essays were all varied and didn't relate to each other, except that they had something to do with blood. There was an fascinating chapter on the establishment of the successful blood donation system in the U. K. that was fascinating medical, social, and cultural history. There was an interesting chapter on the tragic transmission of viruses through blood donations as well as one on the use of medical leeches in modern medicine. Who knew? For me the most interesting and unexpected chapter was the one on menstruation and the impact it has on society. This is a topic that is rarely show more tackled in a thoughtful way, and this essay proved to be the exception. It was thoughtful and yet passionate at the same time. It was medical, cultural, and economical. Economical in that the author dealt with the economic impact that this one fact of life has on the life of humans. She proves beyond doubt that the expense of supplies and the unwillingness of governments and business leaders to even talk about it costs money and most of that cost is passed onto the poorest of the people on this planet. In this essay they author introduced the reader to the "Pad Man of India" and his efforts to make the lives of women in India easier through the introduction of low cost menstrual supplies. The book was very grim in places, but was also full of light humor. I found it to be very readable and informative. show less

***NO SPOILERS***

(Full disclosure: book abandoned on page 145 [out of 289 pages].)

Nine pints of blood--or more visually arresting: one gallon plus one pint. That’s roughly how much is in the human body. It’s facts like these that author Rose George shared in Nine Pints--but only in chapter one. There’s only so much one can say about blood itself.

To fill out a book, George dedicated nine chapters to different sub-topics relating to blood in general. The sub-topics, however, are so disparate that this is, essentially, nine chapters that are the beginnings of nine separate books. To name a few, one chapter is on leeches, another on AIDS/HIV, another on hemophilia. This isn’t everyday information, and there’s much that’s show more fascinating. Leeches produce an anesthetic superior to anything scientists have been able to create. HIV sufferers now have to take only one pill to manage the illness, not eight, precisely timed pills a day. Knocking a knuckle causes “rush bleeding” in hemophiliacs followed by agonizing, debilitating pain. This is a dense, fact-heavy book that covers a lot of ground.

George obviously was enthusiastic about writing Nine Pints and researched each part extensively, but that can work against a science writer who isn’t careful. She included too much information and veered off on tangents, sometimes abandoning the topic of blood entirely.

In tone, Nine Pints swings from interesting to boring. Interesting sections are sharply focused and flow with a natural effortlessness. Boring sections are overlong, with the human element outweighed by the technical, factual, or historical.

Mary Roach, the cream of the crop among pop science writers, endorsed Nine Pints with excessive praise right on the cover. An endorsement from Roach is unsurprising; the topic seems just like one she'd write about. It may be unfair to compare George to Roach, but it’s hard not to when George has written about this, and her previous books have been about dirt and human feces. Maybe she wants to emulate Roach or maybe she doesn’t, but George can’t compare. She lacks Roach’s wittiness and gift for making nonfiction science page-turning entertainment. George took the more academic route. In and of itself that’s fine, but with Nine Pints, she wasted an opportunity to do something exciting with a subject many don’t want to read about. Nine Pints is educational for sure, but its drawbacks mean some in-depth articles on this subject would be a better choice. show less

Баррель человеческой крови почти в полторы тысячи раз дороже барреля нефти. В отличие от запрещенной торговли органами этот бизнес вполне процветает. Известно о нем не так много, но британская журналистка Роуз Джордж проливает на него свет, делясь как деловыми подробностями, так и научными фактами о самой главной жидкости наших тел. Кстати, британскую кровь брать за границей особо не любят, ведь она show more должна быть взята у людей, родившихся после 1996 года, то есть находящихся вне подозрений относительно той памятной эпидемии коровьего бешенства, вызывавшей болезнь Крейтцфельдта — Якоба. Книга не ограничивается мировой торговлей донорской кровью и касается смежных бизнесов. Например, неожиданно закрытого (и непомерно прибыльного) рынка женских гигиенических средств, призванных с кровью ежемесячно бороться. Его объем оценивается в 23 млрд. долларов, и стартапов, желающих подрезать «крылышки» транснациональным гигантам, не убавляется. Национального героя Индии Муругу, успешно создавшего один такой, Unilever даже приглашал в Лондон для изучения его опыта. show less

Thanks to the LTER program, I've had the pleasure of reading biographies of butter, rain, wine, breakfast, and now, blood. "Nine Pints" is indeed a biography of the amazing fluid that courses through each one of us. Author Rose George takes us on a swim -- the components that make blood what it is, the medicine of this precious bodily fluid, the misinformation and superstitions that we created (blood was, for many years, racially segregated), and, it will be no surprise to learn, the many ways individuals and institutions sought to capitalize financially. Always fascinating, at times tragic, at other times heroic, George's journey through the red liquid that makes us alive is an excellent narrative for the lay person. So, read the book, show more and then, if you can, donate a pint! show less