{"id":4314,"date":"2024-06-14T18:18:57","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T15:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uanimals.org\/media\/?p=4314"},"modified":"2024-12-19T14:11:54","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T12:11:54","slug":"first-blood-donations-how-humanity-learned-to-transfuse-blood-and-what-animals-have-to-do-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uanimals.org\/media\/en\/statti-en\/first-blood-donations-how-humanity-learned-to-transfuse-blood-and-what-animals-have-to-do-with-it\/","title":{"rendered":"First Blood Donations: How Humanity Learned to Transfuse Blood and What Animals Have to Do With It"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]One blood donation <\/span>can save<\/span><\/a> three people. Last year alone in Ukraine, donors <\/span>gave blood<\/span><\/a> at least 14,000 times. So, over the years \u2014 even centuries \u2014 of blood transfusion history, millions of lives were saved. This was made possible thanks to animals, namely the first dog-to-dog blood transfusions. Let\u2019s dive into history and learn about the risky and often inhumane experiments that paved the way for modern blood donation \u2014 lifesaving and safe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Liver or Heart: How the Circulatory System Works<\/b><\/h2>\n

Imagine this: it\u2019s the early 17th century. Copernicus has already shown that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Yet people still do not fully understand the workings of their own bodies, particularly the circulatory system. Since Ancient Roman times, the <\/span>theory of Claudius Galen prevailed<\/span><\/a>, claiming that the liver produces blood and distributes it throughout the body like a centrifuge.<\/span><\/p>\n

But one man in the Kingdom of England set out to prove that these ideas were incorrect. This was physiologist and anatomist William Harvey. Observing the hearts of living animals, he realized that during systole (the contraction of the ventricles and atria), blood is pushed out. The scientist then demonstrated that valves in the veins allow blood to flow in only one direction \u2014 this is how the blood returns to the heart.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, William Harvey hypothesized that blood circulates in animal bodies. In the eighth chapter of his book \u201c<\/span>De Motu Cordis<\/span><\/a>\u201d (\u201cOn the Motion of the Heart\u201d), he explained it like this: \u201c\u2026through dissection of the living in order to experiment and through the opening of arteries, from the symmetry and magnitude of the ventricles of the heart and of the vessels entering and leaving\u2026 I had very often and seriously though about\u2026 how great the amount of transmitted blood would be [and] in how short a time that transmission would be effected\u2026 I began privately to think that it might rather have a certain movement, as it were, in a circle….\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to William Harvey\u2019s research, he <\/span>discovered and described<\/span><\/a> in his research that:<\/span><\/p>\n