Does menstrual origin really draw in bear ? Why does blood count blue in your veins ? And why were the first blood transfusions performed with beast ? Here are 15 facts , diachronic and biologic , you credibly did n’t experience about blood .
1 . A portion of multitude consider that deoxygenate human blood is dreary , turning cherry only when it spills from the torso . In fact , though it is commonly gull as such in medical diagrams and anatomical models , blood is never blue . While your veins may seem to go blue with rakehell , this really has to do withthe way visible radiation interacts with blood and with skin .
2 . Horseshoe crabs , however , bleed low . sealed leeches bleed light-green . And some species of nautical louse – admit penis insect – bleed violet .
3 . The title that bear are attracted to the smell of menstruating women can be delineate to an attack on two female hikers in 1967 by grizzly bears . Scientists have since investigated whether bears are , in fact , concerned in or attract to menstrual blood . The study have n’t exactly been rigorous , but their results suggestthe resolution to these questions may really reckon on the species of bear in enquiry . ( Photo Credit : Jon Nickles / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service )
4 . Some Ancient Greeks believed blood had curative attribute that could be received by way of ingestion . Pliny the Elder ( AD 23 - 79 ) , an historian of the Roman Empire , delineate how epileptic watcher would slurp lineage from the bodies of lately fall down gladiators :
Epileptic patient are in the riding habit of drinking the pedigree even of gladiators , draughts teeming with liveliness , as it were ; a thing that , when we see it done by the wild beasts even , upon the same arena , inspires us with horror at the spectacle ! And yet these persons , forsooth , consider it a most effectual cure for their disease , to swig the warm , breathing , rakehell from man himself , and , as they give their mouth to the lesion , to draw off forth his very life ; and this , though it is regarded as an act of impiety to utilize the human sass to the wound even of a tempestuous beast ! Others there are , again , who make the marrow of the leg - bones , and the genius of baby , the objects of their research !
5 . Pope Innocent VIII is at times said to have been history ’s first recipient role of a blood blood transfusion . But in July of 1492 , when the Pope fall badly , it was still widely believed lineage could be usefully introduced into the body by drinking it , so it ’s hard to say how his “ blood transfusion ” was any different from unity multitude with epilepsy ego - administered in Ancient Greece .
Accounts of the “ transfusion ” vary from translation to displacement , but the gist is usually that a MD of dubious reputation had the Pope drink the blood of three 10 - year - old boys in a play to save his life . The veracity of this report and its particulars have been debated by historians , ( which you canread about here ) . Suffice it to say , the Pope died , and the boys probably did , too .
6 . Prior to the discovery of the circulative organisation , bloodline was retrieve to“burn up”in the heart , as one of thefour humors — or bodily fluid — the condition and balance of which were thought to be reflected by a soul ’s wellness .
7 . The first individual to describe the human circulatory system in item was William Harvey . He did it in 1628 . As Holly Tucker , Associate Professor in the Center for Medicine , Health & Society and the Department of French & Italian at Vanderbilt University , and generator of the science - account bookBlood Work – explains inan essay for Scientific American :
His find did not abolish the opinion of humor , which would carry on well into the nineteenth century . But Harvey ’s theory of circulation ( and it was initially just that , a theory ) paved the style for natural philosopher to begin imagining the possibility of putting thing into veins and arteries for the first time .
8 . It ’s difficult to say when the first veritable attempt at line of descent blood transfusion – i.e. the passage of blood from one body to another by way circulatory passing , rather than ingestion – actually go on . As Abdul Nasser Kaadan , Chairman of the History of Medicine Department at Aleppo University in Syria note inhis review of blood line blood transfusion in History , “ it is potential that all references to the transfusion of blood before 1628 , the date of Harvey ’s discovery of systemic circulation , must be consider , at best , questionable . ”
After 1628 , the history of rakehell blood transfusion is similarly indecipherable . As Tony Long explain over atWired :
Jean - Baptiste Denys , personal medico to France ’s Louis XIV , is generally credit with performing the first human blood line blood transfusion , although some root present that distinction toEnglishman Richard Lower . What is not in dispute is the yr — 1667 — and the patient role — a 15 - year - old boy who had been bled so much by his Dr. that he expect an infusion of blood .
The origin is also not under dispute : Whoever the doctor was , he used a sheep ’s blood . And , somehow , the tike recovered .
9 . Why animate being blood ? Because it was thought to be more pure . Animals , Tucker explain in a 2011 audience withPLOS , “ did n’t tope , they did n’t swear . Some of the first experiments were done with lambs ’ stock , [ which had spiritual connotations ] , so that blood was considered to be more unadulterated , more curing than human line . ” [ At left : “ an early blood transfusion from lamb to man . ViaWellcome Images ]
10 . On the other hand , some scientist feared infusing a human ’s line with an animal ’s would produce abominable human - animal crossbreed . Tucker explains :
[ It was feared ] that human would take on animal characteristics , that you could have quite literally humans who barked and that you could actually , as well , mutate identities . Samuel Pepys , a very well - cognise diarist in England , joked , “ Well , I cogitate it could be a pretty interesting experimentation . What if we cup the blood of an Archbishop into a Quaker ? ” And now you ’re start into questions of : Could you not just mutate abilities ? Could you be ordain some sort of change in beliefs in the very soul of the human being ?
Some scientists so venerate the hypothesis of human - creature crossbreed that they attempted to sabotage later experimentation of Jean - Baptiste Denys , dosing one of his patients with arsenous anhydride to ensure that his endeavour to infuse the man with calf ’s rip would leave in failure . The satire , of course , is that transfusing fauna blood into human blood is a terrible melodic theme , whether it ’s lace up with arsenic or not . Why ?
11 . Blood type would n’t be formally identified until 1901 , when Austrian researcher Karl Landsteiner remark that origin from different people would agglutinate , or cluster , when mixed together . But today , we jazz that human blood type are distinguished by molecular differences on the aerofoil of red line of descent cells , and that harmful and even fatal immune reaction when improperly mixed in the body of a blood recipient .
The four principle blood types in human , first discover by Czech serologist Jan Jansky in 1907 , are A+/- , B+/- , AB+/- , or O+/- . Collectively , these make up the “ ABO ” blood group organization .
12 . There ’s more than one human line mathematical group system . ABO isone of more than thirty major blood group organization recognise by the International Society of Blood Transfusion .
13 . There were other uses for animal ancestry during the Renaissance full stop , besides stemma transfusions – in the house , for instance . According to James Shapiro – Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a specialist in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period – instrumentalist in Shakespeare ’s clock time used real rakehell in their performance . As a young piece , Shakespeare arrive to London as an doer , and , as Shapiro explains ina fantastic episode of Radiolab ( style , fittingly , “ Blood ” ):
… as the youngest player in the company , what [ Shakespeare ] was send off to do was to go to the shambles [ a slaughterhouse ] … and get a bucket of blood , so when they do the Spanish tragedy or any other [ play ] … they ’re not using fake rip , they ’re using brute blood .
14 . Shakespeare would subsequently use animal blood in his own plays . Here ’s Shapiro again :
On the manner from where he be to the dramatic art , [ Shakespeare would ] pass off some kind of slaughtering area . I do n’t know how much it be for a pail of blood , but you involve a bucket of blood for Titus Andronicus , you need a bucket of blood for Julius Caesar . In [ Julius Caesar ] , Shakespeare has Mark Antony say ‘ I put up upon tricky ground , ’ I mean , that stage is covered in rip . He ’s slipping in this stemma .
15 . Shakespeare really had a thing for bloodline . harmonize to Shapiro , “ The word bloodline itself appears 673 time in 571 spoken language in 41 of Shakespeare ’s play and poems , ” including “ 37 times in King John ; 28 times in Richard III , [ and ] 22 times in Henry IV Part I. ”
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