Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th Century Medicine and Beyond
May 2020 · Medical Humanities Book 5 · transcript Verlag
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216
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About this ebook
In the mid-1870s, the experimental therapy of lamb blood transfusion spread like an epidemic across Europe and the USA. Doctors tried it as a cure for tuberculosis, pellagra and anemia; proposed it as a means to reanimate seemingly dead soldiers on the battlefield. It was a contested therapy because it meant crossing boundaries and challenging taboos. Was the transfusion of lamb blood into desperately sick humans really defensible?
The book takes the reader on a journey into hospital wards and lunatic asylums, physiological laboratories and 19th century wars. It presents a fascinating story of medical knowledge, ambitions and concerns – a story that provides lessons for current debates on the morality of medical experimentation and care.
About the author
Boel Berner is a sociologist, historian, and professor emerita at Linköping University in Sweden. In her research she investigates the character and power of technical and medical expertise, historically and today. She has studied technical education and work, the gendered nature of technical knowledge, household technology, and issues of risk. Her current work is oriented towards the history of medicine. It focuses, besides issues of blood donation and transfusion, on the politics of blood group analysis in the interwar years.
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