History of blood transfusion

English physician William Harvey demonstrated that the blood in the body circulates. In his book De Motu Cordis in 1628 he offered a new rationale for systemic therapy and interest in moving blood between bodies, between animals and even between animas and human beings.

The record of man’s attempt to treat suffering and disease by blood transfusion extends back at least to 1667, when Jean Denis published in the Philosophical Transactions his experience in Paris with transfusing blood from a lamb to an agitated man.

The first successful indirect human transfusion, using a syringe to transfer blood from donor to recipient, is attributed to the English obstetrician James Blundell in 1818.

He initiated the transition of human blood to ten patients, five survived, four had postpartum hemorrhage and the fifth was a boy who bled after amputation.

Mortality in his series approached 50 percent, although the mortality related to transfusion of incompatible blood unknown.

The era of modern transfusion medicine dates to the early twentieth century when Karl Landsteiner published first of a series of papers demonstrating the presence of the ABO blood group system in 1901.

It was only during the twentieth century that blood transfusion came to age. The first of the century was the era of pioneers and ingenious, hardworking individuals who made major breakthroughs.
History of blood transfusion