Essay Sample: Blood Transfusions in World War One

📌Category: Health, Medicine, War, World War I
📌Words: 423
📌Pages: 2
📌Published: 03 June 2022

During WW1, medical corps in the army were met with something nobody had seen before. The injuries and trauma that soldiers endured were a new phenomenon, so medical innovations had to be made to catch up. One of the significant medical innovations due to WW1 was blood transfusions. 

The first historical blood transfusion attempt took place in 1492, Rome, by pouring the donated blood into the patient's mouth (Community Blood Center). Neither the donors nor the patient survived. Before the 20th century, all of the efforts were direct, meaning that there couldn’t be any time between the taking and giving of blood due to how quickly blood coagulates after being removed from the body. 

After 1492, the next significant advancement was in 1818. This was the successful injection of donated human blood into a human patient. Because they didn’t want the blood to coagulate, the transfusions would happen with the donor, and the patient literally connected by tubes to move blood from one body to another. Following this, there weren’t any notable improvements until 1914. 

During WW1, Major Lawrence Bruce Robertson,  a Canadian WW1 surgeon, learned and proved to the British medical corps that the direct transfusion of safe blood-type combinations from healthy to dying patients could save the lives of many (Stansbury and Hess). “There are four major blood groups: Group A, group B, group AB, and group O” (American Red Cross). With transfusions, you need to be careful who’s blood you give to whom because some combinations of blood types can be fatal.

After Major Lawrence Bruce Robertson’s discovery, Captain Oswald Hope Robertson,  an English-born medical scientist of the US army worked out that stowing blood donations was the easiest way to prevent casualties. This lead to the scientific discovery of putting sodium citrate into donated blood to prevent coagulation, meaning that the blood could be stored and used days later.  He soon established the first blood bank on the Western Front in 1917.

Blood transfusions and donations are incredibly important now, saving lives every day.  [“Every 2 seconds, someone in the U.S. needs blood and or platelets”. The discovery of mixing sodium citrate lead to innovations making donating, stockpiling, and transfusing blood much easier. Now, platelets can be used up to 5 days after extraction, and red blood cells can be used within 42 days. While injury and trauma victims need blood donations to keep their hearts pumping, many cancer patients need blood almost daily for chemotherapy treatment. (American Red Cross)] From 1492 to 1914, to today, being able to transfuse blood is a significant medical innovation that saves 

The sources that I used for my research are the American Red Cross, the Community Blood Center, and Transfusion Medicine Reviews from the National Library of Medicine.

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