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Jan 1, 1000
Alcmaeon of Croton 500 BCE
Alcmaeon of Croton was a greek thinker who practiced animal dissection. He observed that arteries were not the same as veins. -
Jan 1, 1130
Aristotle 350 BCE
Aristotle believed that the heart was the central organ of the body. He performed animal dissections and observed that the heart was made of three chambers including humans. -
Jan 1, 1180
Herophilus of Chalcedon 300 BCE
Herophilus of Chalcedon concluded that veins aren't as thick as arteries and arteries and carry blood. -
Feb 21, 1200
Eminent Cairo
In the mid-1200's Eminent Cairo found and described pulmonary circulation which is the flow of blood to and from the lungs. -
William Harvey
William Harvey published Anatomical Treatise on the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals. In this, he says that blood circulates within the body and is pumped from the heart. -
Jan Swammerdam
Jan Swammerdam was a microscopist who is thought of to be the first person to describe red blood cells through his observations. -
Marcello Malpighi
Marcello Malpighi detected the capillary system which is the network of fine vessels connecting arteries with veins. -
Richard Lower
Richard Lower performed the first recorded blood transfusion from one dog to another. -
Jean-Baptiste Denis
Jean-Baptiste Denis was a physician who did a blood transfusion on a teenage boy that had a persistent fever with 9 oz. of lamb's blood. -
Anton van Leeuwenhoek
Anton van Leeuwenhoek gave a more well-defined description of red blood cells by stating that they were approximately 25,000 times smaller than a fine grain of sand. -
William Hewson
Hewson's book Experimaental Enquiry into the Properties of the Blood, contained details from his research on blood coagulation and his success of blocking clotting and isolating what he named coagulable lymph now known as fibrogen. -
Philip Syng Physick
Though Physick's work was not published, a footnote in a medical journal gives credit to him for performing the first human-to-human blood transfusion. -
Sir William Osler
Sir William Osler observed that small cell fragments from bone marrow make up the quantum of clots form in blood vessels. The small fragments are later known as platelets. -
Karl Landsteiner
Landsteiner was an Austrian physician who published a paper describing his discovery of the 3 main human blood groups - A,B and originally C later becoming O. -
Alfred von Decastello and Adriano Sturli
Decastello and Sturli identify the fourth blood group, AB. -
Dr. Ludvig Hektoen
Dr. Hektoen suggests checking blood types of donors and their recipients for incompatibility signs before the transfusion. -
Albert Hustin and Luis Agote
Hustin and Agote discover adding sodium citrate to blood prevent it from clotting. -
Francis Peyton Rous and J.R. Turner
Rous and Turner created a citrate-glucose solution allowing blood to be stored a few weeks after being collected and still be usable for a transfusion. -
Dr. Oswald Robertson
Dr. Roberston used Drs. Rous and Turner creation to collect and store type O blood for war casualties, establishing the first blood depot. -
Dr. Serge Yudin
Dr. Yudin was the first to test if transfusing human blood with a deceased individual's blood would be effective. His success saves a young man who attempted suicde. -
Drs. Philip Levine and R.E. Stetson
Drs. Levine and Stetson discover an antibody in the blood of woman who give birth to a stillborn baby and conclude that a problem in the blood of the fetus is inherited from the father and triggers the unknown antibody production in the mother. -
Drs. Karl Landsteiner and Alexander Weiner
Drs. Landsteiner and Weiner discover the Rh blood group. -
Dr. Charles Drew
Dr. Drew built on techniques he previously developed to seperate and preserve blood plasma to find that it was an usable substitute for whole blood. He made a modern and highly sterile system to process, test and store plasma for shipment overseas. -
Red Cross Donor Service
The American Red Cross opened its first civilian blood donor service center in New Yorkand collect over 13 million units of blood over the course of the war. -
Dr. Paul Beeson
Dr. Beeson reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that the occurrence of jaundice in 7 cases linked to blood or plasma transfusions. -
Dr. Carl W. Walter
Dr. Walter developed a plastic bag for blood collection. -
Dr. Max Perutz
Through the use of X-ray crystallography, Dr. Perutz was able to unravel hemoglobin. -
Drs. Kenneth M. Brinkhous and Edward Shanbrom
Drs. Brinkhous and Shanbrom made a highly concentrated form of Factor VIII so it can be easily stored in a portable vial and injected with a syringe by the hemophilia patient. -
Dr. Judith Pool
Dr. Pool finds that slowly thawed frozen plasma yields deposits high in Factor VIII. These deposits called cryo are given to hemophiliacs to stop bleeding episodes. This prevented hemophiliacs from having to go to the hospital to be treated. -
Dr. Baruch Blumberg
Dr. Blumberg identified a substance on the surface of the hepatitis B virus that triggers the creation of antibodies leading to the development of a test to find the presence of these antibodies to identify infected blood donors. -
AIDS
The first cases of AIDS, intially called GRID (Gay-related Immunodeficiency Disease) is reported. -
Dr. Luc Montagnier's Lab
Researchers at Dr. Montagnier's lab locate the virus that causes AIDS in the swollen lymph node in the neck of a Parisian AIDS patient labeling in LAV (lymphadenopathy-associated virus) -
Dr. Robert Gallo
Dr. Gallo identified the virus that causes AIDS calling it HTLV III. -
ELISA test
The 1st blood -screening test to detect the presence or absence of HIV antibodies called the ELISA test is licensed by the U.S. government. -
Infectious Blood Disease Tests
From 1987-2002 a series of tests were created to screen donated blood for infectious diseases. These tests include; anti-HTLV-I, hepatitis C test, HIV-1 and 2 antibodies test, HIV p24 antigen test and NAT
