In Blood Work, Holly Tucker tells a tale of fierce rivalry, bizarre experimentation and an uneasy sense of transgression
PERHAPS you remember the moment in 2006 when President George W. Bush warned of a terrifying human-sheep hybrid: “He had wool growing on him in great quantities, and Northampton’s sheep tail did soon arise from his anus, or human fundament.”
No? Fair enough. The quote is from Thomas Shadwell’s 1676 play The Virtuoso, a comedy in which a daffy man of science, Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, envisions creating “a flock” of human sheep. (“I’ll make all my clothes from ’em,” he…
