ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the haphazard origins and gradual evolution of socio-technical system in Sweden between 1915 and 1950. It discusses how the meaning and practice of blood transfusions were constituted within local assemblages of artefacts, practices and people, as well as notions of blood and disease. During the First World War, citrated blood had been collected in one place and then transported to field hospitals. In 1939, the war between Finland and the Soviet Union involved many Swedes, as Swedish blood and plasma was sent to Finland and Swedish doctors treated wounded Finnish soldiers, both in Finland and across the border in Sweden. As such, the meaning of donation, as both a medical and technical act and an emerging social phenomenon, is the focus of the forthcoming analysis. Monetary compensation, cost-free health checks and a shift towards less invasive medical practices for donation were necessary preconditions in the Swedish context, coupled with intense propaganda and blood donation campaigns.
