- What experiment did Landsteiner run to identify distinct human blood groups?
- What are the A, B, O, and AB blood groups, and what causes blood from different groups to clot when mixed?
- Why had so many nineteenth-century blood transfusions been fatal before Landsteiner's discovery?
- How long did it take blood typing to move from Landsteiner's lab to routine clinical use?
Blood Typing and Transfusion
Blood groups and the science of safe transfusion.
- Why was direct donor-to-recipient transfusion such a logistical bottleneck before 1916?
- What role did sodium citrate play in making blood storable rather than requiring an immediate donor?
- How did the Royal Army Medical Corps's 1916 transfusion become the founding act of blood banking?
- What modern medical infrastructure, from blood types to donation programmes, traces back to this 1916 procedure?
- In what ways did Bordet's mechanistic view of immunity lay groundwork for blood typing and allergy research?
- What made blood transfusions so dangerous before Landsteiner's discovery?
- How did Landsteiner identify the four blood groups A, B, AB, and O?
- Why does mixing incompatible blood types cause red cells to clump together?
- Why did the Nobel committee wait thirty years to recognize Landsteiner's 1901 discovery?
- Why was pre-transfusion blood typing still inconsistent in hospitals thirty years after its discovery?
- How did Landsteiner's 1930 Nobel Prize help standardize blood typing practice across hospitals?
- What effect did standardized blood typing have on survival rates in the following decade's war wounded?
- What symptom appeared in Henrik Dam's chicks when he fed them a fat-free diet, and how did it lead him to discover vitamin K?
- Why couldn't the microscope answer what proteins were present in blood serum?
- What distinct protein classes did Tiselius's technique reveal within serum?
- What is streptokinase, and what future medical use did its discovery point toward?
- How did a chance reaction between a haemophiliac patient's serum and an Aboriginal blood sample lead to the discovery of the hepatitis B surface antigen?
- What was the true underlying cause of Asimov's death, and how did he contract it?
- Why did standard treatments fail to stop the nosebleeds of a patient with Glanzmann's thrombasthenia?
- What is the likely mechanism by which cured, salted pork stopped uncontrolled nasal bleeding?
- What clue led Harvey Alter to suspect an unidentified virus was causing hepatitis in transfusion patients?