Inventions & Discoveries · Medicine and health
Blood transfusion
Blood transfusion is the transfer of blood or its components into the veins of a human or other animal. The physician Richard Lower performed the first reliably documented successful transfusion, between two dogs, in February 1665, and described it to the Royal Society that December. On 15 June 1667 Jean-Baptiste Denys transfused a sheep's blood into a 15-year-old boy, but deaths after such experiments led to bans in 1668. James Blundell performed the first successful transfusion of human blood, for bleeding after childbirth, in 1818 at Guy's Hospital in London, and Karl Landsteiner's discovery of blood groups in 1901 gave the practice a scientific basis.
On the inventions tree
- First known
- 1665
- Where
- Britain
- Credited to
- Richard Lower
NoteLower's transfusion was between two dogs; the first from an animal to a human was Jean-Baptiste Denys's in France in 1667, and the first successful one of human blood James Blundell's in London in 1818.
See also
Cite this entry
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). Blood transfusion. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/blood-transfusion
- MLA
- “Blood transfusion.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/blood-transfusion. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “Blood transfusion.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/blood-transfusion.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Blood transfusion’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/blood-transfusion (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻