Transfusion, infusion, and auto-transfusion : their comparative merits and indications / by August Schachner.

  • August Schachner
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Transfusion, infusion, and auto-transfusion : their comparative merits and indications / by August Schachner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [From the American Pratmjfoner iws, October 31, 1896.] TRANSFUSION, INFUSim> AND j\UTQ^^NSFUSlON ; THEIR COM- PARATIVES^ERITS AND MNDICATIONS.* BY AUGUST SCHACHNER, M. D,, PH. G. Whenever a number of measures of a more or less varied and changeable character are advanced for the fulfillment of a long-existing demand, it means an absence of unity in the selection of the proper measure and a general distrust in a satisfactory adjustment of the demand. This is clearly illustrated by the number of measures that from time to time have been recommended to overcome the depressing and even fatal condition following enormous hemorrhages. The fact that the operation of transfusion is but rarely performed at the present time, and that of infusion faring but little better, has tempted me to refreshen the subject, somewhat more than a month ago, before one of our local societies. Since that time I have been im- pressed more than ever with the neglect to which these operations have been subjected and the importance of bringing them vividly before the eyes of those engaged in operative work. I may be pardoned for borrowing from my former paper the histor- ical outlines in connection with the development of these minor opera- tive procedures. The first intimation of transfusion can be found in 333d and 334th verses of the seventh book of “ Ovid’s” Metamorphoses, Veteremque haurite cruorem ut repleani vacuas juvenili sanguine venas. This carries us back to the time of Christ, and from thence down to the present period a long but unbroken chain can be traced running through the Hebraic and Egyptian medical records. In 1492, or more than a hundred years before the circulation was understood. Pope Innocenz VIII was struggling with his last illness. He was attended by a Jewish physician who, it is supposed, was prompted by the idea noted in the verses of “Ovid,” and performed transfusion with the blood taken from three Roman youths. In 1615 Andreas Eibavious, of Halle, wrote an article upon a charlatan who is supposed to have performed transfusion. In 1628 another appeared under the authorship of Johann Colle; coupled with these came the discovery of the circulation by Harvey, which was directly responsible for the vigorous attention which the learned men at that time gave to the subject. In 1652 an apparatus for arterio-venous transfusion was contrived by Folli, of Italy. In 1666 Richard Tower drained a good-sized dog by tapping the jugular vein. When the animal was exhausted he filled the vessels with blood drawn from a cervical artery of a second dog until the animal had recovered, he then drained the same animal a second time and again filled his arterial system with blood from a third dog, thus completely changing the blood twice in the same animal without any unfavorable consequences. This represents the first well- authenticated experimental maneuver made in the direction of transfu- sion. * Read at the June meeting of the Kentucky State Medical Society, 1896.