Blood transfusion service (1941) Pt. 1 of 4

[Music] [Music] l [Music] [Music] in order to understand the story of blood transfusion we must know something about blood itself blood flowing in our body consists of two parts solid particles called cells and a liquid called Plasma in which the cells float when a wound is made blood escapes and forms a clot the liquid remaining after the cells have clotted is no longer called plasma but serum therefore blood inside our body is made up of cells floating in liquid plasma this is called whole blood but when blood leaves our body it divides into clotted cells and liquid serum the modern story of blood transfusion starts with two great discoveries made at the beginning of this Century before 1900 doctors had not understood why some transfusions were successful While others caused bad reactions and even death but in 191 liner a young scientist in Viet thought there might be different kinds of human blood which might account for blood not always mixing properly when transfused from one person to another to test this he carried out an experiment of which this diagram is a simple illustration 10 samples of blood are taken from 10 men into 10 test tubes the blood in the tubes then divides into its two main parts serum shown white and cells shown black now here are 100 empty test tubes into the first row cross is put serum from the first man into the second row across serum from the second man and so on until all the hund have serum in them then into the first row down are put cells from the first man into the second row down cells from the second man then the third row and so on until each lot of serum is mixed with each lot of cells making 100 serum cell mixtures soon differences are seen in the mixtures some show spots these spots mean that the cells have clumped together this is the dangerous utenation which has caused so many deaths from studying these results it was found that there are four different kinds of human blood or four blood groups these are called group O group a group b and group AB there is of course no difference in quality or Purity between Bloods of different groups Group B blood is just as good as group a or group a B and group O as good as any of the others the only advantage of group O blood is that it can be given to people of any blood group without clumping taking place liner's Discovery solved one major difficulty standing in the way of successful blood transfusion but another remained