Matters of the heart: cardiologist explains the workings of our most vital organ
- Heart surgeon Sandeep Jauhar explains and exalts the heart in equal measure in his new book
- He traces the recent history of heart medicine, and reflects on a death in his own family
Heart: A History by Sandeep Jauhar pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sandeep Jauhar opens his new book, Heart: A History, with the story of a patient – himself. Shortness of breath while climbing the stairs to his office led to a slew of tests and eventually the discovery of a blockage in the main artery feeding his heart.
After relating the story of his own heart, Jauhar dials back to 1953, when his paternal grandfather died suddenly one sweltering summer day in India.
In the morning, he was bitten by a snake of an unknown type. That afternoon, he was feeling fine until neighbours arrived bearing the corpse of a black cobra, claiming it was the culprit. He took one look at the snake, collapsed and died.
Some were convinced that it was that very cobra that killed him, but his grandson the cardiologist believes it was a heart attack, pure and simple, possibly induced by the fright of seeing the snake. “My grandfather had succumbed to the most common cause of death throughout the world,” Jauhar writes.
