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The Discovery of Human Blood Group
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2007-9-14
Since 1628 when Harvey discovered blood circulation, human being ceaselessly attempted to do blood transfusion. In 19667, French philosopher Dennis and surgeon Murrays tried the first time to transfer 150ml lamb blood to human being. Followed that, some people repeated this experiments, but they got very serious consequences even causing people dead. After, the attempts of blood transfusion were suspended by human.
One century later, people again tried to do blood transfusion. In 1819, Blundell completed blood transfusion from one person to another person for the first time in history. In general speaking, the consequence of blood transfusion was disappointed in that period. Blood transfusion may either recover a person¡¯s health or cause his/her death, what's the root reason resulting in such consequence?
Austrian scholar Karl Landsteiner began to work on this topic since 1900. He found that no aggregation phenomenon could be found when he put his own erythrocyte and blood serum together in a test tube; when he mixed together erythrocyte and blood serum sourced from different individuals, there might be aggregation or no aggregation. This phenomenon was once observed by many people, but he was the only person who gave it an explanation. Erythrocyte has two kinds of specific structures that may exist alone or together. Blood serum has the antibody called agglutinin of specific structure in erythrocyte; when agglutinin meets with the specific structure in erythrocyte, aggregation will happen, which might be very dangerous when a person is on process of blood transfusion.
Then, he drew the conclusion: Human blood group is genetic. His theory has placed a foundation for blood transfusion.
Since blood transfusion attempts in the past always were confronted with failure, therefore common physicians restricted themselves from this field; still, a large number of scientists were carrying on various experiments relating to blood transfusion. Dramatically, the breaking-out of World War I became the event with great impetus driving the development of blood transfusion. Due to the urgent need of save the life of the wounded by war, large quantity of blood transfusion became an effective way to drive the wounded back from death. Doctor Oldenburg first applied aggregation reaction to blood matching test before blooding transfusion, and blood transfusion between human was only possible when no aggregation could be found when erythrocyte and blood serum were mixed together; this method gained great success and saved a great number of the wounded life. With continuous experiments and practices relating to blood transfusion in the following years, blood transfusion became safe; when time went to the end of 1920s, blood confusion turned a popular medical treatment in big cities in Europe and North America.
Why did Karl Landsteiner win the Nobel Prize 1930 thirty years later since he began to work on human blood group? This is because there is a strict rule to award the Nobel Prizes. The Nobel Prizes are available to those achievements being proved useful and great contribution for human kind, this process may last for more than ten years from their invention to actual application. Only in this way, the value of the Nobel Prize can be fully demonstrated. Secondly, the discovery of blood group and subsequent development of blood confusion by using many other technologies are the collective achievements devoted by many scholars, and Karl Landsteiner is the pioneer of them. This is also the reason why this honor is so late.
However, when you are experiencing blood offer or confusion, don't forget the discoverer of human blood group-Karl Landsteiner.
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Organizer:
Beijing Municipal Association for Science & Technology
Undertaker: Beijing Science & Technology
Consulting Center,
Information Center of Beijing Municipal Association for
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