In most medical procedures today, at least in blood transfusions, you wouldn’t expect milk to be used. However, in a short period of history, we see that milk transfusions were indeed carried out instead of blood.
People have needed blood transfusions throughout their history of injury. According to some, there are those who claim to have witnessed the Peruvian Incas performing blood transfusions while exploring the “New World.” While the evidence is weak, if this is true, it would be the earliest example of such a procedure in the historical record.
However, when William Harvey described the circulation of blood in 1616, it is known for certain that rather peculiar experiments were widespread in Europe. In 1666, at the Royal Society in London, Richard Lower, a physician and surgeon, performed a blood transfusion between two dogs, using a goose feather to connect one’s artery to the other’s carotid artery.
Animal-to-human blood transfusion
In 1667, Jean-Baptiste Denys, a French physician, performed the first fully documented animal-to-human blood transfusion. The patient was a young boy who had been bled twenty times to treat fever (another old method of treatment). According to Hippocratic medicine, which was the dominant medical tradition at the time, this was a standard procedure for removing perceived impurities from the body. However, as might be expected, this treatment left the child rather weak. Denys transferred blood from a lamb’s carotid artery to the boy’s veins. The boy survived and his condition improved, but the lamb died after the transplant.
The hope for a blood transfusion was not only to improve health and eradicate disease, but it was also believed that it could change recipients’ personalities and eradicate insanity. In most trials, however, the procedure only led to death, and in 1668 it was eventually decided by the Châtelet edict to ban blood transfusions. The procedure sunk into oblivion for nearly a century and a half.
Blood transfusions had a brief resurgence in the early nineteenth century when obstetrician James Blundell transplanted a syringe containing defibrinated blood (non-fibrinized blood that helps it clot) to prevent clotting. Although this was an improvement over previous attempts, the process was still poorly understood as it inhibited coagulation and the patient’s propensity to die made it an unattractive procedure.
Milk transfusion instead of blood
Then, in the mid-19th century, scientists revived the procedure with a new idea: Why settle for blood transfusions when we can transfuse something else?
In 1854, Dr. James Bovell and Dr. Edwin Hodder injected people with milk during the cholera epidemic in Toronto, Canada. They were inspired by the work of Denys, who, in addition to transplanting lamb’s blood to his patients, also injects milk into various animals, believing that “very small fat and fat particles in milk” will be converted into “white blood cells” within the body.
Bovell and Hodder believed that milk helped regenerate white blood cells, and surprisingly, their first patient who was given a milk transfusion survived and their health improved. Unfortunately, all five patients who had the procedure subsequently died.
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Shortly after the first trial was successful, milk was assumed to be a safe and valid substitute for blood. Milk transplant has become a popular treatment method, especially in North America. However, many medical practitioners remained skeptical, and the large number of deaths among patients receiving this treatment soon led to its complete disgrace. In the 1880s, saline infusions replaced milk transfusions instead of blood. Later, at the turn of the century, after Karl Landsteiner discovered the first three human blood types, a safe and effective way of transfusion was found.
Today, blood transfusion is considered an accepted and standardized medical procedure. The demand for blood is so high that more than 118.5 million blood donations have been collected worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
Blood transfusions save lives and are usually administered to people who have suffered severe blood loss through injury, surgical procedures, or childbirth. We also see it frequently used in various treatments for conditions such as hemophilia, kidney failure, and even cancer.
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