ABSTRACT
Even the most primitive humans were aware of the importance of blood. Greek mythology is full of tales of transfusion to replace lost youth. The Egyptians used blood to soak their bodies for treatment of filariasis while some Romans are said to have been drinking blood from gladiators as a therapy for epilepsy (1). The first known transfusion is said to have been in 1492 when the terminally ill pope Innocentius VIII received blood from three young boys and the pontiff gave some of his blood to the youngsters. The attempt ended with the death of all three donors and the pope. The whole story is probably a fable and if transfusion had occurred, although it is said to have been vein-to-vein, blood may have been ingested by mouth (2,3). The perception of blood circulation was not clarified until William Harvey published his dissertation in 1628 (4). Harvey could not, however, fully explain how blood could pass from the arterial to the venous system. The discovery of this connection was made possible by the invention of the microscope and the works of Marcello Malpighi. The architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Sir Christopher Wren, in 1658, fashioned a quill and a pig’s bladder to instill wine, ale, opium, and liver of antimony into the veins of dogs (1). Lower publicly demonstrated transfusion between two dogs in 1666 (1). The first successful blood transfusion to a human was performed in Paris 1667 by Jean Baptiste Denis, physician to Louis XIV, who transfused blood directly from the carotid artery of a sheep to a hypovolemic young man. Repeated transfusions between animal to man, however, mostly led to disasters that forced the Royal Society of London, the French Parliament, and the Church of Rome to prohibit further experiments of this kind.
