How blood have banks saved countless lives?
British obstetrician and physiologist James Blundell performed the first recorded human-to-human blood transfusion. He injected a patient suffering from internal bleeding with 340 to 396 grammes of blood from several donors.
For many years, blood transfusion could be given only directly from a adonor to a reciver. This was because if blood is stored, it starts to clot. In 1914, researchers discovered that addingg sodium citrate to blood will prevent it from clotting, and refrigerating the blood made it possible to store it for days.
Today, if blood is needed urgently for a blood transfusion, one can always get it from a blood bank. These blood banks collect the blood from donors, then stores , and preserve it for later use. Oswald Hope Robertson, a medical researcher was instrumental in establishing the first blood banks. Interestingly, it was Dr. Bernard Fantus at Chicago's Cook Country Hospital who coined the term 'blood bank' in 1937. Blood banks play a circuial role in society for they save countless lives by making donated blood available to anyone in need of it.