The Book About Blood by HP Newquist

The book that I read is called The Book About Blood By HP Newquist. It is a book that explores some fascinating ancient tales and history about blood. Scientists began to understand this fluid only one hundred years ago: how it's microscopic components flourish our whole body. Blood is spread so much all throughout your body, that if you poke a needle through your skin, you are drawing blood.  This is because blood travels through a network made up of 100,000 miles of veins, arteries and capillaries.While it is in your body,  blood is always red. It is never blue but some people think it is. This is because some veins look blue under skin. Oxygen that is rich with blood is red, and when blood cells give up oxygen, they lose their brightness. Blood turns dark red as it travels through you, before lightening again when it absorbs air. Your veins aren’t blue either. They appear that way because of the way light interacts with the layers of your skin, letting the area around your veins take on a different color.

During the 1300’s, Europe had little to no education so they believed many superstitions such as the plagues. This period condoned ideas about witches and warlocks, werewolves and vampires. People would believe almost anyone who had a “good” explanation for what was going on around them. Into this confusion came the strangest doctors to ever practice medicine: barbers.  During the Dark Ages, many barbers learned how to become surgeons. This was because of two things. The first was that many real surgeons died during plagues because  they had been infected by the people they were treating. The second was because barbers knew how to use razors, and this was an important skill when you needed to cut someone or something open. The easiest medical procedure for barbers was bloodletting. Around this time, it was called phlebotomy. It became one of the most common ways to treating various illnesses all over Europe.     Bloodletting did continue. These barbers, and the doctors after, had to be very careful when performing phlebotomy because they could easily cut open a vein and let a person bleed to death.                                                                                                                                             
Blood is created in the spongy marrow. Blood flows from your heart to your lungs and back to the  heart to bring oxygen inside your body. Blood pressure is a measure of how hard your blood is pressing against your blood vessels. This is very important because it tells doctors if your heart is beating at an appropriate strength and if there are any problems with your arteries.
The circulatory system is the highway in which your blood reaches every part of your body.  More blood goes to your brain, than to any part of your body. The Circle of Willis ensures that blood gets to the brain by a number of different ways. Everything that you put into your mouth ends up in your blood and these are the organs that play a very important role in helping blood do its job. The liver is your blood system's biggest filter. Your spleen is small, but it acts as a blood reservoir in times of emergency.
All in all, blood is very important, so try to keep it in your body!