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The Origins of Blood Transfusion: Early History

LIKE MANY ADVANCES in medicine the advent of blood transfusion cannot be attributed to one person. It took several men working independently in different countries and different centuries to make it possible. Blood itself has held a spiritual and symbolic place in the lives of human beings throughout history. The Bible in Leviticus 17:11 reads, "The life of the flesh is in the blood."! Ancient Romans were known to drink the blood of slain gladiators in order to gain some of their strength. The Egyptians often took baths in blood for rejuvenation. This idea of rejuvenation is present in ancient literature as well. Homer tells of Odysseus being revived in the realm of the dead by drinking blood. Ovid describes how Medea transforms Jason's father, Aeson, into a young man, by slitting his throat, draining his old blood and replacing it with a concoction of "herbs, hoarfrost, olives and wolf entrails. " Perhaps these stores of rebirth are the impetus behind the event that is occasionally known as the first transfusion. Legend has it that in 1492, Pope Innocent the VIII had become increasingly somnolent and weak to the point that his court on occasion mistook him for dead. Scattered versions of this story have the Pope actually receiving a venous transfusion of the blood of three Itl-year-old boys. Much more likely and suggested by the older literature is that the Pope received the blood in the form of a potion to drink. What is known for sure is that the Pope died, the three young boys died, and the physician in charge of the transfusion was not heard from again." To make blood transfusions a logical possibility knowledge of blood circulation was needed. William Harvey finally provided this in 1628. It was Harvey's article that Francisco Folli, a Florentine physician, used as the basis for his hypothesis about blood transfusions. Folli published the first book on blood transfusions in 1654. He claimed to have invented blood transfusion and described the operation as having the