Illustration of an early xenotransfusion from lamb to man, from Matthias Gottfried
Purmann’s Grosser und gantz neugewundener Lorbeer-Krantz, oder Wund Artzney . . .
Zum andern Mahl vermehrt heraus gegeben (1705).
June 15
The first successful transfusion of blood into a human was performed on this day in 1667. The blood donor was a sheep, and the supervising doctor was a French physician named Jean-Baptiste Denys. He put a small amount — about 12 ounces — of sheep's blood into a 15-year-old boy, who survived the procedure. He repeated his experiment on another man and was again successful, but when he tried to increase the amount of blood actually transfused for his third and fourth patients, they died, and the practice of animal-human blood transfusions was outlawed in 1670.
It was believed at that time that volatile, hot-tempered people could be calmed by giving them the blood of a docile animal, like a sheep or cow, but there were concerns about long-term changes and mutations in the patient. Would he end up with a sheep's head? Samuel Pepys mused in his diary about the possibilities: "This did give occasion to many pretty wishes, as of the blood of a Quaker to be let into an Archbishop, and such like." It was generally agreed upon that humans should only receive transfusions of human blood, but the first successful human-to-human blood transfusion didn't occur until 1818, due to lack of understanding about blood type compatibility.
