The story of a blood transfusion to a Pope / G.A. Lindeboom.

  • Lindeboom, Gerrit Arie.
Date:
1954
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The story of a blood transfusion to a Pope / G.A. Lindeboom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Reprinted from Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 1954, Volume IX, Number 4 The Story of a Blood Transfusion to a Pope r G. A. LINDEBOOM* The increasing therapeutic use that modern medicine makes of blood transfusion intensifies the attention given to its history. Several important studies inform us about it. As a matter of course we want to know the very beginning of its development, in other words, when exactly the first transfusion from man to man took place. The blood transfusion given to Pope Innocent VIII is often referred to, be it only incidentally, as in a recent paper of Maluf.1 The Pope died on 25 July 1492. Some days previously, as the story goes, a Jewish physician had infused the blood of three ten-year-old boys, who all died soon afterwards as a result of this. I endeavoured to find out where the story originated. Pope Innocent VIII was born in 1432 and passed his youth at the Neapolitan court. In 1484 he ascended the Holy Chair. He did not live like a saint, and he seems to have had several children to whom he gave high positions within his sphere of influence. A sarcastic epigram mentions even eight sons and eight daughters, and turns his name from Innocent to Nocens, the very opposite: Octo nocens pueros genuit, totidemque puellas Hunc merito poterit dicere Roma patrem. His main concern was with power and money. During his rule al¬ most all of the Roman Curia were backsliding into simony and immorality. His health was poor during the last years of his life. In 1488 he suffered a stroke, and in 1490 his condition was temporarily so serious that he seemed almost dead. It is not fair to dismiss the story of the blood transfusion for theoretical reasons as does Matthew2 in a book on Innocent VIII’s successor, Alexander VI (1492-1503). He rejects the story for two reasons: (i) the idea of blood transfusion could not enter the mind of any person not knowing about the circulation of the blood; (ii) the fact that the blood circulates was not published till 1628. A theoretical rejection like this is not tenable. As a matter of fact the idea had been mentioned long before Harvey’s discovery. In 1566 Cardanus had already3 alluded to it. He wrote that “there are some * Professor of Medicine and Medical Encyclopaedia, Free University, Amsterdam. 1 Maluf, N. S. R. History of blood transfusion. /. Hist. Med., 1954, 9, 59'107- 2 Matthew, A. Life and times of Rodrigo Borgia. London (n.d.).