This issue focuses on the heart and cardiovascular medicine. Life & Times for its part stresses the metaphysical and metaphorical heart with an eclectic smorgasbord of useful, challenging, and entertaining articles.

In 2015 I took part in running a medical humanities symposium on the heart. I discovered in the process not only that the heart has many more physiological functions beyond that of a pump, but also that it can have religious, ethical, and political significance, both of itself and as a metaphor.1 Anatomy and pathophsysiology feature in this issue (albeit un-cardiologically): Daniel Baumgardt reflects on a GP career that includes teaching anatomy in a medical school and explains how clinical practice and anatomy are mutually enhancing.2 Elke Hausmann reviews Understanding Allergy, by Sophie Farooque, and finds a text to read and to share with patients.3 Ahmed Rashid expands our view from the body (colorectal cancer resection) to the body …