Three people are being transfused every minute in our country. And every year about 1.5 million Russians need this procedure. Mainly:
- Injured (car accidents, fights, etc.)
- Pregnant women and women in labor
- Cancer patients
On June 14, World Donor Day, I was able to visit the regional transfusion station, meet amazing people and unusual experiments of the past.
Blood transfusion station. You can take it from 8.00 to 13.00. They accept about 20 people.
Of course, it's not bad to get 2 days for vacation, eat at the expense of the Ministry of Health or take food with money (from 500 to 4000 rubles, depending on the region and components). But the vast majority of donors donate blood free of charge. Svetlana Gubskaya in 1995 almost lost her newborn daughter. The child was saved by the blood of donors. For 22 years now, a woman herself has donated blood to those in need. She says she feels like a 15-year-old the next day.
Svetlana Gubskaya donated blood and plasma more than 140 times
Svetlana Gubskaya donated blood and plasma more than 140 times.
When did the history of transfusion begin?
Promotional video:
Even in ancient Rome, aristocrats drank the blood of defeated gladiators. They believed that part of the strength and youth of the fighters would pass to them. Deeply mistaken. There is a lot of iron in the blood. An excess of it in the body threatens with poisoning, pain in the stomach, liver pathologies.
The very first transfusion experiments took place in the 17th century. British physician Richard Lower conducted an experiment on two dogs. (1665) The animals were not harmed, but the procedure did not give the effect that the doctor expected. He was sure that the little dog would become more active and stronger if the blood of a more powerful and larger brother was put into his veins.
The next step was animal-to-human transfusion. The test subject was a young man suffering from a mental disorder named Arthur Koga, and the donor was an unnamed sheep.
Lower's experiment.
For transfusion, a structure consisting of plucked goose feathers was used. The ends were inserted into the incisions in the veins. The feathers were connected by a silver tube. The experiment went well. The young man was not hurt, but he was not cured of madness. Around the same time, the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste-Denis, the court physician of Louis XVI, conducted several successful experiments with the transfusion of animal blood into humans.
Jean-Baptiste-Denis.
As "donors" they took not only sheep, but also horses and calves. However, the "triumph of science" did not last long. The patients began to die. Experiments were banned. Modern scientists explain that successful experiments were rather the exception. The blood of living creatures did not come into conflict with the blood of a person and did not harm him. As a rule, such experiments ended with the rejection of foreign material and disastrous consequences.
The first successful person-to-person transfusion took place in 1818. The patient was a woman who had lost a lot of blood during childbirth, and the donor was her husband.
The same procedure in Russia was successfully repeated by the St. Petersburg obstetrician Andrei Wolf. This happened in 1832. Note that 3 blood groups were discovered only in 1900, and the fourth - in 1902.
Have you ever had to be a donor?