1628
English physician William Harvey discovers the circulation of blood. Shortly afterward, the earliest known blood transfusion is attempted.
Harvey was born at Folkestone, Kent, England, April 1, 1578.
Harvey focused much of his research on the mechanics of blood flow in the human body. Most physicians of the time felt that the lungs were responsible for moving the blood around throughout the body. Harvey's famous "Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus", (On the Motion of the Heart and Blood) commonly referred to as "de Motu Cordis" was published in Latin in 1628, when Harvey was 50 years old. The first English translation did not appear until two decades later.
Harvey, observing the notion of the heart in living animals, was able to see that systole was the active phase of the heart's movement, pumping out the blood by its muscular contraction. Having perceived that the quantity of blood issuing from the heart in any given time was too much to be absorbed by the tissues, he was able to show that the valves in the veins permit the blood to flow only in the direction of the heart and to prove that the blood circulated around the body and returned to the heart.
1665
The first recorded successful blood transfusion occurs in England: Physician Richard Lower keeps dogs alive by transfusion of blood from other dogs.
Richard Lower was born at King Street, London, 1631.
He was a pioneer of experimental physiology. He earned an M.D. degree in 1665. He began his own research on the heart. He traced the circulation of blood as it passes through the lungs and learned that it changes when exposed to air. He was the first to observe the difference in arterial and venous blood.
1667
Jean-Baptiste Denis in France and Richard Lower in England separately report successful transfusions from lambs to humans. Within 10 years, transfusing the blood of animals to humans becomes prohibited by law because of reactions.
Jean-Baptiste Denys was born at Paris, France, 1643.
Jean-Baptiste Denys, personal physician to France's Louis XIV, is generally credited with performing the first human blood transfusion, although some sources award that distinction to Englishmen Richard Lower. What is not in dispute is the year – 1667 – and the patient – a 15-year-old boy who had been bled so much by his doctor that he required an infusion of blood.
The source is also not under dispute: Whoever the physician was, he used a sheep's blood. And, somehow, the kid recovered.
Subsequent transfusions using sheep's blood were not as successful, however, and the practice was eventually banned. Science was unaware of the danger not only of interspecies transfusions but of the fact that human beings possessed different, generally incompatible, blood types.
