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In 2500 BCE, Egyptians are shown drawing blood from patients. They were bleed from the foot and neck area.
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Herophilus of Chalcedon dissects the first human being in public. This public dissection was around 200 BCE
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Ibn al-Nafis discovers the blood flow from the lungs. It shows that the blood travels to the lungs, go all the way around, and back.
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The Italian Andreas Vesalius criticizes Galen in the second edition of his seven volume work detailing human anatomy, DE FABRICA.
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Jan Swammerdam, a 21-year-old Dutch microscopist, is thought to be the first person to observe and describe red blood cells.
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Using a rudimentary microscope, Italian anatomist Marcello Malpighi observes the capillary system, the network of fine vessels that connect the arteries and the veins
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Richard Lower performs the recorded blood transfusion. He used a goose quill and bladden made by Christopher Wren. He was succesful using dogs and saved one.
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French physician Jean-Baptiste Denis transfuses a teenage boy suffering from a persistent fever with nine ounces of lamb's blood. He attaches the lamb's carotid artery to a vein in the boy's forearm, without the patient suffering any negative consequences.
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Anton van Leeuwenhoek provides a more detailed description of blood cells. He says that blood cells are "25,000 times smaller than a grain of sand."
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William Hewson details his research on blood coagulation, including blood clotting and isolating a substance from plasma. He calls in the "coagulable lymph."
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James Blundell performs the first human to human blood transfusion. He injected a patient suffering from internal bleeding with 12 to 14 ounces of blood from several donors.
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Sir William Osler observes small cell fragments from bone marrow that make up bulk of clots. These will soon be called platelets.
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Karl Landsteiner published a paper on blood types he has discovered. Named type A, type B and type C, these will be used in modern medicine. Type C will later be renamed type O
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Colleagues Alfred von Decastello and Adriano Sturli identify a fourth blood ground that will be called AB. This causes aggulation in both A and B blood groups.
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Dr. Ludvig Hektoen of Chicago recommends checking the blood of donors and recipients for signs of incompatibility before the transplant.
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Researchers Albert Hustin and Luis Agote discover that adding sodium citrate to blood will prevent it from clotting. Dr . Hustin publishes his finding in April.
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Dr. Richard Lewisohn formulated the optimum concentrainion of sodium citrate that can be mixed with donor blood. This prevents coagulation and poses no danger.
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Francis Peyton Rous and J.R Turner find a citrate-glucose solution that allows blood to be stored for a few weeks after it was colletected. This blood will still remain good to e used for transfusionm
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Dr. Oswald Robertson collects and stores O type bllood. He establishes the first blood depot.
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Percy Lane Oliver begins operating a blood donor service at his home in London. The donors agree to be put on call 24 hours of the day and are placed in a phone log to be contacted.
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The Mayo Clinic begin storing citrated blood and utiliizing it for transfusions within hospitals in the U.S
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Dr. Bernard Fantus coins the term "blood bank" to describe the blood donation, collection, and preservation facility he starts at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, IL, as Director of Therapeutics.
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Plasma shortage in Britain during WW2 gets the U.S to organized the Plasma of Britain campaign. This was ran by Dr. Charles Drew.
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In January, at the behest of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army and Navy, the American Red Cross agrees to organize a civilian blood donor service to collect blood plasma for the war effort. The first center opens in New York on February 4, and the Red Cross collects over 13 million units of blood over the course of the war
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Dr. Paul Beeson links hepatitis infections to people who have had a tranfusion. He publishes his reports in JAMA
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During hte post war period, independent and community blood banks join together to form a nation network of blood banks. The first meeting was help in Dallas in November.
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Dr. Carl W. Walter develops a plastic bag for the collection of blood. This is more portable and stronger compared to glass bottles.
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With th e help of X-Rays, Dr. Max Perutz is able to unravel the structure of the protein in the blood cell that carries oxygen. Thiss protein is called hemoglobin
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Drs. Kenneth M. Brinkhous of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Edward Shanbrom of Hyland Laboratories produce a highly concentrated form of Factor VIII by pooling large quantities of plasma that generate vast amounts of cyro, which are then redissolved, treated, filtered, and centrifuged. The resulting powder's clotting power is 100 times stronger than raw plasma, easily stored in a portable vial, and can be injected with a syringe by the hemophilia patient.
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Dr. Judoth Pool discovered that slowly thawed frozen plasma yields deposits high in antihemophilic Factor. These deposits are called cryoprecipitates are have much more clotting power that plasma or any other hemophiliacs to stop bleeding.
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In July, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Elliot Richardson transfers the responsibility of regulating the blood banking industry from the Division of Biologics Standards (DBS) to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
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The first cases of a syndrome initially called GRID (Gay-related Immunodeficiency Disease), due to its prevalence among gay men, are reported. It is later renamed AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).
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When hemophiliacs also begin to develop GRID, Dr. Bruce Evatt, a specialist in hemophilia at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), begins to suspect that the syndrome may be blood borne and presents his theories at a meeting of a group of the U.S. Public Health Service in July.
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Researchers at Dr. Luc Montagnier's lab at the Institut Pasteur, in France, isolate the virus that causes AIDS. They locate it in the swollen lymph node in the neck of a Parisian AIDS patient and label it LAV (lymphadenopathy-associated virus).
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Dr. Robert Gallo of the NIH announces that he's identified the virus that causes AIDS, which he calls HTLV III (human T-cell lymphotropic virus), at a press conference on April 23.
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After dozens of Americans are infected with AIDS from blood transfusions, the first blood-screening test to detect the presence or absence of HIV antibodies -- the ELISA test -- is licensed by the U.S. government on March 2. The test is universally adopted by American blood banks and plasma centers.
