Poets' Blood, Jean Bernard

"My scientific life had as its first and constant motif blood – its genesis, functions, diseases, and changes. By day, I studied blood cells and sera. In the evening, I read or re-read poets. Sometimes I encountered blood again. An intuition, an allusion from the poet, would illuminate my clinical or biological thinking the next day. The exchanges thus established inspired this book, which is a personal anthology. It is the same blood that flows in Iphigenia's veins before the planned sacrifice, that quivers under the microscope, that gleams on lips that surrender... This anthology bears witness to this unity and diversity of blood." Jean Bernard.