Book cover of The Wine-Dark Sea Within: A Turbulent History of Blood by Dhun Sethna
Biological Sciences

The Wine-Dark Sea Within: A Turbulent History of Blood

A revisionist history of medicine, in which blood plays the starring role 
 
Inspired by Homer’s description of the ebb and flow of the “wine dark sea,” the ancient Greeks conceived a back-and-forth movement of blood. That false notion, perpetuated by the influential Roman physician Galen, prevailed for fifteen hundred years until William Harvey proved that blood circulates: the heart pumps blood in one direction through the arteries and it returns through the veins. […Learn More]