Transfusion : its history, indications, and modes of application / by Chas. Egerton Jennings ; with engravings illustrating the author's syphon for intravenous injection and immediate transfusion, and a bibliographical index.

Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Transfusion : its history, indications, and modes of application / by Chas. Egerton Jennings ; with engravings illustrating the author's syphon for intravenous injection and immediate transfusion, and a bibliographical index. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    CHAPTER II. ITS HISTORY. That empirical treatment is so often adopted before a rational basis is known, is well exemplified in transfusion; for whilst the work De motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus of the immortal Harvey appeared in 1628, transfusion was attempted at least as early as 1492. I say attempted, for the operation proved a complete failure : “ The vital powers of Innocent VIII. rapidly gave way; he had for some time fallen into a kind of somnolency, which was sometimes so profound that the whole Court believed him to be dead. All means to awaken the exhausted vitality had been resorted to in vain, when a Jew doctor proposed to do so by the transfusion, by a new instrument, of the blood of a young person, an experiment that had hitherto only been made on animals. Accordingly, the blood of the decrepit old pontiff was passed into the veins of a youth, whose blood was transferred into those of the old man. The experiment was tried three times, and at the cost of the lives of the three boys, pro-