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Gr 4–7—Murphy tells the fascinating story of a partnership between three extraordinary individuals, which led to a groundbreaking heart surgery. Prior to 1944, 25 percent of babies born with Tetralogy of Fallot, a serious heart defect, died before they reached their first year; only 30 percent lived to the age of 10. Dr. Helen B. Taussig, a pediatric cardiologist who worked at Johns Hopkins, approached renowned Hopkins surgeon Dr. Alfred Blalock about the possibility of performing cardiac surgery on these infants, known as "blue babies." Dr. Blalock enlisted the help...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Murphy (An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793, rev. 7/03; Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure, rev. 7/12) here again focuses on the history of science and medicine. "Blue baby syndrome," the result of a congenital heart condition, was a significant medical problem in WWII-era America: it killed seventy percent of affected children by the age of ten. This is the story of the Johns Hopkins Universi...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Murphy tells the story of the medical team in the 1940s that solved the problem of "Blue baby syndrome"--Dr. Alfred Blalock; pediatrician Helen Taussig...Log In or Sign Up to Read More