Bloody saga wins medical book prize

LONDON (AP) - The biography of a 17th-century scientist who mapped the mysteries of human blood has won the medical-themed Wellcome Trust Book Prize.

Organizers announced Wednesday that British author Thomas Wright’s “Circulation” had been awarded the $25,000 pound ($40,000) prize. The book is a biography of William Harvey, physician to King Charles I, and his quest to understand the workings of the heart and blood circulation.

Funded by charity the Wellcome Trust, the prize aims to bridge the gap between literature and science and is open to fiction or nonfiction works with a health or medical theme.

Journalist Mark Lawson, who chaired the judging panel, said Wright’s book “combines scholarly science with such narrative excitement that it will be a great surprise if we do not eventually see `Circulation: The Movie.’”