Who invented the blood transfusion and when?

The first blood transfusion attempt to appear in the pages of history was recorded by the historian Stefano Infessura in the 15th century: Infessura stated that in 1492, the blood of three boys was given to Pope Innocent 8, who was in a coma. As the circulatory system was not yet known, blood was given to the pope by mouth under the supervision of a physician, and in the end, both the Pope and the children whose families were persuaded in exchange for 10 ducats each died!

Until the 17th century, the circulatory system and how blood moves throughout the body were unknown. It was believed that the vital fluid is produced in the liver, from where it circulates through the veins throughout the body and flows to the heart. English physician William Harvey (1578-1657), who studied medicine in Padua after Cambridge, had been observing how the heart worked and how the blood circulated throughout the body since 1616. Harvey published his famous work Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (Anatomy Studies of the Movements of the Heart and Blood in Animals) in 1628. With this study, it was understood that the blood circulates in the body in a closed system, and the blood circulation was discovered. The idea that blood could be transplanted from one living thing to another would soon be accepted, paving the way for more comprehensive and sophisticated blood transfusion experiments on animals.

In 1665, the first successful blood transfusion from one dog to another was performed in England. The experiment appeared in the journal Philosophical Transactions of December 17, 1666. In the letter published in the journal, Richard Lower, a physician, described to chemist Robert Boyle the details of his method of transfusing blood from one dog to another. He also explained the blood transfusion experiments he conducted from sheep to sheep and between sheep and dogs.

These experiments also aroused interest in France. Jean-Baptiste Denis, Louis 14th's doctor, had begun testing blood transfusions on animals.

June 15, 1667, would go down in history as the day of the “first human blood transfusion”: The blood of a 15-year-old boy suffering from uncontrollable agitation was shed 20 times by the physicians who looked after him. Jean-Baptiste Denis ruled that the cause of the symptoms was a lack of blood and decided to have a blood transfusion. He drained 3 ounces (90 ml) of blood from the vein in the boy's arm, then cut the carotid artery of a lamb and transplanted three times as much blood into the boy. The patient felt well. Paid the second trial to a healthy 45-year-old man and transfused 10 ounces (300 ml) of blood; There was no change in the man. He made the third attempt on a Swedish nobleman who was sick; transfused 6 ounces of calf blood; The patient, who felt good at first, then deteriorated and died 24 hours later. He made the fourth trial on December 19, 1667, on a 34-year-old mentally ill Antoine Mauroy, giving him 5-6 ounces of calf blood; the next day, the patient's urine was black; Centuries later it would be understood that the reason for this was the breakdown of red blood cells called "hemolysis". The patient died after living for two months.

Jean-Baptiste Denis, who was accused of murder in the trial opened by those who were against blood transfusion and held in Paris on April 17, 1668, was found not guilty, but blood transfusions from animals to humans were prohibited without the approval of the Paris Medical School. On January 10, 1670, the French parliament completely banned blood transfusions. This prohibition would continue until the end of the 19th century. In 1678, the English parliament would also ban blood transfusions, and there would be little progress in this area for the next 150 years.

First successful human-to-human transplant

The idea of ​​blood transfusions began to revive in the 19th century, especially for the purpose of supplementing blood volume. James Blundell, gynecologist at Guy's and St Thomas Hospital in England, performed the first successful human-to-human blood transfusion to treat a postpartum hemorrhage in 1818. The dying patient showed a temporary improvement. The donor was the patient's husband, and 4 ounces of blood from his arm had been transplanted to his wife. Blundell performed 10 more transplants between 1825 and 1830, 5 of which were successful.

He presented the results of his work to the London Medical Surgical Society on December 22, 1818, and gradually improved his technique. Doctor Blundell also invented various instruments for use in blood transfusions. In an article titled "Life saved by transfusion" in the Lancet magazine in 1829, he emphasized that blood transfusions can only be done from person to person and should not be done between species.

Discovery of blood groups

In 1900, at the Institute of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Vienna, Karl Landsteiner, then 32 years old, planned a simple experiment. He took blood from a total of 6 people working in the laboratory, including himself; He separated the serum and red blood cells of these bloods and mixed each with the other. The serum of some caused some red blood cells to clump together. Why was it individual differences or was it bacterial infection? In the study he repeated in 1901, he divided the blood into three groups; There were two antigens, A and B, and two antibodies, antiA and antiB. In addition to the A antigen and the B antigen, neither the A nor the B antigen (it was first called group C; later it was called O for "ohne" in German) were found on the red blood cells. In 1902, De Castello and Sturli group AB found both antigens on red blood cells; serum of this group had neither antiA nor antiB antibodies.

When blood groups were discovered and categorized in this way, the reason for the failures in the past was understood. But after Landsteiner's discovery in 1901, it would take decades to learn how to store blood safely.

During World War I, Robinson, a military doctor, discovered the anticoagulant so that blood can be stored for a long time; On March 27, 1914, Belgian doctor Albert Hustin performed the first non-direct blood transfusion using sodium citrate as an anticoagulant (anticoagulant). Before the discovery of anticoagulants, blood transfusions had to be done directly from donor to recipient. In the 1910s, it was realized that blood could be preserved for a long time by adding anticoagulants and storing it in the refrigerator, and this paved the way for blood banks. At the beginning of 1916, the first transplant was done using blood stored in a refrigerator.

By the 1920s, the need for blood was increasing. Percy Oliver established the first blood donation service and then the voluntary donation system with the British Red Cross in 1921. Bernard Fantus launched the first blood bank in Chicago in 1937.

A quarter of a century after the discovery of groups A, B, and O, another blood group system was recognized. Among Landsteiner's assistants, Philippe Levine published a case in 1939: a woman with a group 0 received a blood transfusion from her husband, who was also a group 0, but it was unsuccessful. The woman's serum was causing aggregation in her husband's red blood cells. Tests were performed on 104 different bloods from the same group, and 80 had aggregation of red blood cells. Landsteiner and Wiener also reached similar findings; In the experimental study, they studied the blood of rabbits, mice and Rhesus monkeys. Antibodies from these animals caused aggregation of red blood cells in 85% of humans, and in 1940 they were designated RH (+).

In 1941, the Red Cross in the USA began to store blood from donors. A-B-0 groups before the 1st World War, and on the eve of the 2nd World War, the RH factor became known and blood transfusions became possible. In the second half of the 20th century, bank blood transfusion became possible and became a standard medical practice, from surgical interventions to the treatment of hemophilia.

During the Nazi rule in Germany, group B was believed to be Slavic and Jewish, while group A was the blood of the intelligent race. During World War II, the German army only took blood from certified Aryan donors. The United States also divided blood by race; donations from blacks were used to make the album. Bleeding by race continued in some states in the USA until the late 1960s; It was a crime for the doctor to give blood from a black person to a white person without their consent.

Landsteiner, who turned blood transfusion into a safe practice by drawing attention to the coagulation reactions that may occur with the use of different blood groups during blood transfusion, also prepared the birth of the science of immunity (immunology). In 1930 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on blood types. In 1940, together with Alexander S. Wiener, he found the Rhesus group, named after the rhesus monkey used in the experiments, and from there the RH factor; named the blood groups as positive or negative according to the presence of RH antigen. It showed that the cause of jaundice resulting in death in newborns was RH incompatibility of the mother and the baby.

Landsteiner's work will save countless lives by enabling safe blood transfusions; Understanding blood types would also revolutionize criminal investigations in forensic medicine, parenting, and organ transplantation. The famous physician, who rendered great services to humanity, had a heart attack in his laboratory on June 24, 1943 and died two days later.

26 years ago, a book was published on the correct nutrition formula according to blood type; Peter D'Adamo, in his book Eat Right 4 Your Type (Diet According to Your Blood Type), argued that the blood type we have is our evolutionary heritage and that we can achieve harmony in our body by eating accordingly.

The author argues that blood types emerged at some critical juncture in human development. Namely, group 0 of our hunter-gatherer ancestors living in Africa, group A after the start of agriculture, group B emerged in the Himalayas between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago; Group AB, on the other hand, was born from a mixture of groups A and B in modern times. Therefore, our blood type also told us what to eat; For example, while those with type O blood should be fed like hunter-gatherers and avoid grain and dairy products, group A blood required a vegetarian type of diet because it emerged in agricultural society. When we consume foods that are not suitable for our blood type, our body reacts by perceiving them as antigens; Thus, the ground was prepared for various chronic diseases. As a result, blood group diet was recommended to lose weight, prevent cancer and diabetes, and delay aging.

Translated into 60 languages, D'Adamo's blood type diet book has sold 7 million copies. Did this diet really work? Over the past 1,000 studies have searched for answers to this question and investigated the health effects of nutrition by blood type. But there was no scientific evidence to support any positive effect from them.