Book Review

King of Hearts: The true story of the maverick who pioneered open heart surgery

N Engl J Med 2000; 342:2004June 29, 2000

Article

King of Hearts: The true story of the maverick who pioneered open heart surgery
By G. Wayne Miller. 310 pp. New York, Times Books, 2000. $25. ISBN: 0-8129-3003-7

If there had been a Nobel prize for cardiac surgery, it would have been awarded to half a dozen surgeons, starting with Gross and Gibbon and extending to Starr or Favaloro. In the middle of this list would have been C. Walton Lillehei (Figure 1C. Walton Lillehei). This book by G. Wayne Miller is a thorough and entertaining biography of Walt Lillehei presented from his own perspective as well as that of his patients and his contemporaries. The reader gets a real sense of the adventure, the urgency, the excitement, and the disappointments of laboratory and clinical research during the exciting first two decades of cardiac surgery.

Those who knew Walt Lillehei will agree that his scientific fervor and accomplishments, his brilliant laboratory studies and bold clinical innovations, his flamboyant style, his sometimes troubled but always colorful personal life, and his work-hard, play-hard character are all accurately represented. One reason for this accuracy is that the author spent time with Dr. Lillehei, his family, his patients, and his colleagues, and the primary sources are thoroughly documented. An aspect of this book that will make it absorbing to both medical and lay readers is the extensive research into the exact details of the medical and personal lives of many of the patients involved with Lillehei's early cardiac operations. Both his successes and his failures are documented through personal interviews and hospital records, making these first patients and their families as much heroes of the story as is Lillehei himself. The book is chronologically organized but includes abundant diversions in the form of personal anecdotes, stories about patients, and scientific description, so that the human side of all aspects of the story appropriately dominates the scientific side, although this side is carefully recounted.

The style of this book is fictionalized biography similar to that of The Microbe Hunters, by de Kruif (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926). The facts are all there and are accurately presented, but conversations, thoughts, and emotions are invented to flesh out the bare bones of chronologic events. Thus, this book, like most good biographies, takes on a quality that is better than fiction. Surgeons who were Lillehei's contemporaries will recognize some overstatement (e.g., “the maverick who pioneered open heart surgery”) and just a little overemphasis on Lillehei's accomplishments relative to those of all the others who are cited, but even these points are an appropriate reflection of Walt Lillehei's personality. The reader who wants a sense of Lillehei's view of the early days through his own eyes should read his laureate address to the American Society of Artificial Internal Organs, entitled “A Personalized History of Extracorporeal Circulation” (ASAIO Transactions, 1982;28:5-16).

Any author has to make choices, and Miller spends very little time on Dr. Lillehei's family; for example, his brilliant surgeon brother, Richard, is not mentioned. However, what Miller has chosen to include is accurate, fascinating, absorbing, and a very good representation of the science and the life of C. Walton Lillehei — one of the mavericks who pioneered open-heart surgery.

Robert H. Bartlett, M.D.
University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0331

Citing Articles (1)

Citing Articles

1. 1

   Edward E. Bartlett. (2001) Did Medical Research Routinely Exclude Women? An Examination of the Evidence. Epidemiology 12:5, 584-586
   CrossRef