378 Book Reviews heart. In chronological order, she discusses the impact of human heart transplantation on the development of artificial hearts; considerations of technology and risk (focusing on the nuclear-powered atomic heart); the seemingly triumphant Jarvik-7 heart (despite the seizures, strokes, and memory loss patients suffered, some of them becoming household names); and the invention of simpler ventricular assist devices, implanted alongside a patient’s own heart and producing a disconcertingly pulseless blood flow. There is much here for historians of medicine to ponder, for a wealth of research has gone into the making of this book. I was particularly drawn to three themes woven throughout. McKellar analyses the divergent interests always present in the artificial heart field – those of researchers, clinicians, patients, bioethicists, and the media – and how these changed over time. This is a story which features professional conflicts and transgressions, feuds, and accusations of device theft. Secondly, I found McKellar’s analysis of the relationship between these men (and men they all were) and the media fascinating. This theme in her book joins that of historians in related fields, notably Susan Lederer’s Flesh and Blood: Organ Transplantation and Blood Transfusion in Twentieth-Century America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), Ayesha Nathoo’s Hearts Exposed: Transplants and the Media in 1960s Britain (Basingstone: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and Duncan Wilson’s Tissue Culture in Science and Society: The Public Life of a Biological Technique in Twentieth Century Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Third, McKellar notes the malleable and crucial use made of the concept of ‘success’ in describing laboratory experiments and implant operations. Key actors maintained these had succeeded, despite animal and human suffering and deaths. So, success was claimed when a laboratory dog survived with a pneumatically driven plastic heart for ninety minutes before the device failed, and when the atomic heart implanted into a calf kept the animal alive for eight hours before a kink in an inflow tube ‘terminated the experiment’ (pp. 33, 104). Operations were deemed to have succeeded despite patients dying within a matter of hours or days, cast as having been doomed due to their parlous pre-operative state. ‘Success’ was crucial in a young and highly competitive field which needed to attract research funding and political support. It showed that knowledge had been gained through the experiment, and maintained individual motivation and confidence in the ‘grand pursuit’ (p. 51). Artificial Hearts is an excellent contribution to our knowledge about the search for a high-technology solution to end-stage cardiac disease. By grounding that pursuit within a decades-long historical context, Shelley McKellar shows how those undertaking this high- stakes endeavour fought for and gained authority, funding and public acclaim in the face of others’ scepticism that an artificial heart might, one day, be the perfect substitute for the real thing. Helen MacDonald University of Melbourne, Australia doi:10.1017/mdh.2019.34 Matthew Oram, The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy: LSD Psychotherapy in America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), pp. 288, £37.00, hardback, ISBN: 9781421426204. It is difficult to explain to a seven-year-old why some drugs are legal, some are legal only when a doctor says they are, and some can get you arrested. I tried during a recent drive https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2019.34 Published online by Cambridge University Press