Blood Transfusions

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Blood Transfusions were a huge step into the field of medicine. Blood transfusions are when someone receives blood through an IV into their own blood vessels. People are able to be kept alive for longer if not for good with this discovery. Once they figured out how blood circulated throughout the body, blood transfusions became the next step. The first transfusion was done in the mid-1600’s using animals. It was only a couple years after that when a transfusion was performed on an actual human, and it worked. This discovery in medical science opened up a whole new world for people who were sick or dying. Not only did these blood transfusions help people who were losing blood, but it also helped cure people who were sick from diseases. Blood transfusions are an exceptional creation for the health of humans and this has made an enormous result in the way that physicians treat patients.
In the early 17th century, people were unsure about how the body system worked, especially when it came to blood. It wasn’t until the mid-1600’s that William Harvey discovered how the blood circulates throughout the body. Harvey was an English Physician whose discoveries greatly impacted medical science. This discovery completely changed the field of medicine. He first “observed the action of the heart in small animals and fishes” (Weisstein). When observing these small animals he concluded on how the blood circulates the bodies. He made many discoveries in which he announced the way the body works and how it uses blood. “He developed the first complete theory of the circulation of blood, believing that it was pushed throughout the body by the heart’s contractions” (Weisstein). There were still many gaps in the process of how the blood circulates, but...

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...his day. These men have made an enormous amount of discovery to get medicine to where it is today.

Works Cited

Brown, Theodore M. "Richard Lower." PBS. PBS, 2002. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
Healio. “James Blundell: Pioneer of blood transfusion.” Healio, Jan. 2009. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
News Medical. "History of Blood Transfusion." History of Blood Transfusion. News Medical, n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
PMID. "Richard Lower: The Origins of Blood Transfusion." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2013. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
The Biomedical Scientists. "A Brief History of Blood Transfusion." - The Institute of Biomedical Science. IBMS, Nov. 2005. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
Weisstein, Eric W. "Harvey, William (1578-1657) -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography." Harvey, William (1578-1657). Science World, 1996-2007. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.

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