The origins of blood transfusion: a reassessment.

THERE is general agreement among historians about the pioneering phase in the history of blood transfusion. It is recognized that the first effective blood transfusions on animals were undertaken by Richard Lower, who demonstrated his experiment to distinguished scientists at Oxford in February 1666. Within the year the technical details were published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, making the experiment accessible to virtuosi throughout Europe. The medical potentialities of transfusion were quickly recognized; the French physician, Jean Denis, being the first to perform a medical transfusion, apparently without ill effects, in 1667. Transfusion experiments became one of the most attractive novelties at the meetings of the fledgling scientific societies, giving grounds for considerable debate on the background to the innovation. The pre-history of transfusion was quickly established. Lower himself was adamant that he was the first to reason out the experiment and carry it to a successful conclusion. He knew of no earlier speculations about transfusion, or attempts to perform the experiment before 1665.1 During this year it is probable that he and members of the Royal Society independently began experiments on transfusion. However, the Royal Society obtained only inconsequential results until they were assisted by details of Lower's experiments. If transfusion had any significant ancestry, Lower argued that it was indebted to the technique of intravenous injection, which had originated at Oxford in 1656 and subsequently shared much of the appeal of transfusion.2 With minor reservations, modern commentators agree with Lower. The general therapeutic value of blood had certainly been the subject of comment for centuries. By the seventeenth century the idea of direct transfusion had evolved, the best known reference to this coming from the celebrated chemist, Andreas Libavius. But the evidence is diffuse and scattered, indicating little more than a passing curiosity about transfusion and injection.3 The only figure who is known to have attempted the