History of Blood Transfusions

Long before the phenomenon of blood antigen - antibody interaction was discovered, surgeons experimented with human transfusion in an attempt to save the lives of patients who where drying from severe blood less and the resulting shock. The first attempt may have sheep blood, without blood test first before transfusion.

The first attempt may have been an English physician during the mid-17^th century who infused a wounded soldier with sheep blood. Not surprisingly that the soldier suffered a painful death. The first successful transfusion of human blood to another human was done by British doctor in 1818 in order to save the life of a woman who was hemorrhaging following childbirth. On the mid of 19^th century also experimented with a variety of blood substitutes, including milk, water, and even oils.

It was the discovery of ABO blood types in 1900 that finally led us to understand how to consistently use transfussion to save lives. Life threatening reaction still occur about 1 out of 80,000 transfusion process in developed nations. The ABO blood group and its central role in transfusion failures is described in the next section of this tutorial.