Artificial Blood
Discovery of artificial blood:
William Harvey first described the
circulation of blood in 1616. Up until that point, it only
made sense for medieval doctors to get rid of “bad blood” in the form of
bloodletting – to restore the balance of fluids in the human body according
to the generally accepted
theory of Hippocrates about the four humours. Soon after the discovery of Harvey, all kinds of weird
experiments started to unfold to see whether blood could be replaced by milk, urine, beer,
sheep’s blood, saline solutions, or even plant resins. They thought that by doing so, diseases
might be cured or entire personalities could be changed. After the first successful blood transfusions in 1667, the practice was still
banned soon afterwards as patients inoculated with sheep or lamb blood died one
after the other. For 150 years, the practice of
blood transfusions and the search for an alternative bodily fluid was halted for
the better.
Entire bloody business in veins:
Blood
has been the symbol of life for millennia – as it is connected so vehemently to
good health and well-being. People noticed very early on that blood loss is
connected to death. No wonder that in folk tales vampires tried to suck out
blood from the living to somehow continue their life after death. Being one of
the most widely and easily available you prick your finger, and there it is,
voilá! materials as well as one of the most complex ones, blood has been part
of the collective imagination as magical, life-giving fluid and as a basic
material for healthcare for centuries.
Medical evidence(proof):
Medical evidence suggests that the Incas of Peru
performed blood transfusions already 500 years ago
(later turned out that the majority of people in the South American tribe had
blood type O that’s why these experiments were successful), although Western medicine
only started to experiment with the life-giving elixir after William Harvey first described the
circulation of blood in 1616. Up until that point, it only
made sense for medieval doctors to get rid of “bad blood” in the form of
bloodletting – to restore the balance of fluids in the human body according
to the generally accepted
theory of Hippocrates about the four humours. Soon after the discovery of Harvey, all kinds of weird
experiments started to unfold to see whether blood could be replaced by milk, urine, beer, sheep’s
blood, saline solutions, or even plant resins. They thought that by doing so, diseases
might be cured or entire personalities could be changed.
Unfortunately,
the majority of these experiments where medical professionals or charlatans
tried to inject another fluid into the veins of unwitting patients ended up in
disasters. After the first successful
blood transfusions in 1667, the practice was still
banned soon afterwards as patients inoculated with sheep or lamb blood died one
after the other. For 150 years, the practice of
blood transfusions and the search for an alternative bodily fluid was halted for
the better.
Institutionalized
bloodthirst someone needs blood every two seconds:
In any case, medical professionals haven’t given up
the idea of finding a blood substitute, but they realized there’s a lot more to
figure out about this mysterious material before it becomes feasible.
With the discovery of human
blood groups in the early 1900s, one of the
most important bits of medical information ever since, blood transfusions
became a lot more feasible than before. In 1907, the first cross-matching took
place, which means the examination of the incompatibility of the donor’s and
the recipient’s blood type. Ten years after it, the first blood depot was
created. In the next two decades, blood transfusion services, as well as blood
facilities, were set up, and the practice of blood donation institutionalized.
First need of
blood:
The bloodsheds
of the First World War and the Second World War have shown that blood is
always in short supply – and that hasn’t changed since the early days of blood
donation. According to the estimations of the WHO, about 108 million units of donated blood are collected worldwide
yearly; and about 100 blood centers
in 168 countries report collecting a total
of 83 million blood donations. Although an increase of 10.7 million blood
donations from voluntary unpaid donors was reported from 2008 to 2013, we
cannot sit back and relax about these numbers, since someone needs blood
every two seconds.
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