A new therapy that uses the patient's own blood to cure blood cancers (leukaemias) is the focus of this chapter. The history of its detection and diagnosis is related, along with the long and arduous search for effective treatment, arriving at successful employment of bone marrow transplantation in the later twentieth century. More recent developments in chemotherapy are reviewed, leading to a contemporary account of the encouraging progress with T-cell therapies.

In this chapter the author probes beneath the melodramatic surface of the story of Count Dracula, to reveal more subtle narrative threads, relating to Bram Stoker's critical social observations, both looking back in time, where many metaphorical dimensions of ‘blood’ are in play, and forward in time to late-nineteenth-century changes in gender relations, particularly as encapsulated in the figure of the ‘New Woman’. Just as blood-steeped history is conspicuous on the melodramatic surface of the fiction, so a forward-looking, scientific, and liberated future is discernible just beneath that surface.

This chapter explores the historical evidence for cultural attitudes to menstruation. The most commonly promoted medical theories as to why women experienced a monthly bleed are discussed. The many words and circumlocutions early moderns used to describe menstruation and related female reproductive bleeding are considered, along with prevailing cultural expectations about this event.

This chapter starts with a historical review of ideas about blood flow around the body, culminating in an understanding of circulation, the mechanics of which are described. The propagation of the pressure pulse in arteries is discussed, as is the disturbance to smooth flow caused by the complex geometry of arteries. The deformation of blood cells during their passage along the smallest capillaries is considered, as are the interesting effects of gravity on the venous return to the heart in upright animals, notably those with long necks and legs, such as giraffes and dinosaurs.

The editors recount how the volume came about and the choices that were made to invite contributors. The themes of the volume are discussed, both those in the organisers’ minds at the start, and those that emerged during the course of the lecture series.

This chapter explores different forms of thermoregulation of blood in animals living in a range of contrasting environments, from the Kalahari Desert to the Antarctic ice. In a wide diversity of species, a range of anatomical adaptions are considered, including heart and blood vessels morphology, natural insulation, and as behavioural and life-cycle adaptations. The strategies of endotherms and ectotherms are compared, and the very particular biology of the icefish is considered.

The chapter opens with a concise history of the recognition of blood types that, as well as informing the human immune system, incidentally provide an ideal genetic data set for phylogenetic enquiry. The chapter goes on to relate that enquiry to the author’s People of the British Isles project. This project draws upon genetic data from just over 2,000 volunteers to construct a genetic map of the human population of the British Isles. From that genetic map, the peopling of the British Isles is inferred and reconstructed.

Blood as the foundation of life and health is the focus of this chapter, which assembles a series of heroes and villains in the quest for good blood health. The heroes comprise a pioneer of the blood transfusion service and a designer of economic sanitary pads; the villains comprise an experimenter on the accident-strewn path to mastery of life-saving (rather than life-taking) transfusion.

In conversation with one of the editors (Iosifina Foskolou), Marc Quinn discusses his life and practice as an artist, and how that brought him to work with blood. After discussing the technical challenges of sculpting with blood, the conversation moves to notable artworks, including: Self, Our Blood, Breath, and A Surge of Power.