Sandeep Jauhar

Sandeep Jauhar's new book is Heart: A History.

From his Q&A with Marion Winik at Newsday:

In "Heart," you tell us that the doctor who contributed most to the invention of the heart-lung machine — a pump used during heart procedures — had been thinking of quitting med school to pursue a career in writing, until his family dissuaded him. "That advice sounded very familiar," you say. Yet now you have a successful career in both fields. How did you manage it?

To my father, a top geneticist, "nonscience is nonsense." To him, a career in writing was anathema. When I was in medical school in St. Louis and was offered an internship at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he didn't think I could do both at once. My brother, on the other hand, pointed out that there's a lot of time in each day, and much of it actually goes to waste. If I took the job, I would have to catch up with all the lectures I missed at school by reading written transcripts. Still, I thought I could do it. That internship taught me to write on deadline and gave me a strong set of clips. Those clips landed me an assignment from The New York Times.

The idea of not wasting time stands me in good stead now. I write at night, after the kids are in bed; I'll steal a few minutes in between patients, or if one cancels; I do a lot of writing while driving, by dictating scenes into a tape recorder. I'm doing what I enjoy.

What do you consider the most surprising revelation in your book?

The heart for millennia was considered the locus of our feelings, and while this is incorrect, we have now learned that...[read on]

Learn more about the author and his work at Sandeep Jauhar's website.

The Page 69 Test: Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation.

The Page 99 Test: Doctored.

--Marshal Zeringue