The Stepansky Medical Encyclopedia View in Timeline →

1667

In Paris, Jean-Baptiste Denis, assisted by Paul Emmerez, perform first animal-to-human blood transfer using the “pure” blood of a lamb (the “lambs of God”), believing, per Galen, that “If you could fill up a patient with pure – or, better still, specially designed – animal blood, you could cut down the level of corrupt blood . . . Transfusion would in this way add a new level to the humoral machine, making a mechanical system of something that was never anything of the kind” (Craddock, 90). Their first two patients survived their transfusions, but the third one, using calf’s blood died. Their final transfusion, calf to (mad)man (Mauroy) “to improve his character” (110)  his death after a third transfusion, not owing to the transfusions, but to arsenic poisoning, administered by his wife, after a cabal of transfusion detractors secretly persuaded her to bear false witness against him. Despite his innocence, Denis’ reputation was ruined, and transfusion was “effectively abandoned” in both France and England(113-114). As to their previous transfusion successes, “Denis and Emmerez couldn’t have known that platelets would naturally stick to the side of their silver tube if they took too long to make the transfusion. This was happening all along. Obstructing the flow of blood would have meant their patients got little or no blood inside them after all. Some would have made it through [as] a human body can deal with a small amount of animal blood with only relatively mild symptoms” (95).