WEBVTT - From the Vault: I Want a New Blood 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.600 Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:12.039 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.120 Time to go into the vault for an older episode. 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:16.880 This one was called I Want a New Blood and 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:20.439 it was originally published October eight, So we're still dipping 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:23.560 into the Halloween last year's season. Yep, We've we've got 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:26.560 the fake blood on drip for this one, So let's 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:29.880 drink up. I'm imagining like a box wine, you know 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:39.720 in the car bood. Hey, Doc, I've been thinking I 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:44.200 need a new blood. Oh, the animal blood it's not working. Yeah, 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:46.840 I tried it. It made me crash my car, made 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:48.960 me feel you know, about three ft thick. Well, what 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:53.680 about true blood? Just hit the market? Headache, dry mouth, 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.800 made my eyes too red. Well, there's currently a clinical 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:00.760 trial for something called day Breaker. Be right there, Doc, 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:02.960 I got some on the black market. Made me vomit 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:07.039 and explode. But what exactly are you looking for? Well, 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:08.920 you know, I don't want to go crazy with hunger. 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:12.000 I don't want my things too long. I also don't 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:15.200 want it to spill or come in a pill. Now, 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:19.160 now you're rhyming again. Have you been taking your synthough gore, 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.920 because that's one of the withdrawal symptoms. I'm all out, doc, 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:25.759 and I don't imagine you have anything else around here 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:33.040 on tap, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:42.160 production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:44.559 to Blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:47.560 I'm Joe McCormick. And here we are covered in blood. 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.760 That's right. Last year we put out a Halloween episode 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:55.920 titled I Drink Your Blood Type, all about blood types 0:01:56.280 --> 0:01:59.400 that you know humans have, but with a vampire flavoring. 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:01.040 I think we did a on skit at the beginning 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:05.000 of that one. Um, we briefly mentioned synthetic blood in 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:08.280 vampire fiction in that one. I remember we did reference 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:11.800 true Blood as well as a nineteen thirty nine film 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:15.440 titled The Return of Doctor X, which I haven't seen yet. 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.800 Still haven't seen this one, but it stars Humphrey Bogart 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.000 as an evil doctor with this kind of like skunk 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:24.960 streak in his hair and round glasses who has been 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:28.680 brought back to life with synthetic blood. The hair suggests 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:32.040 Elsa Lanchester like in Bright of Frankenstein. It does. Yeah, 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:35.960 you definitely can see the Frannstein d na um maybe 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.919 even the lazy Frankenstein DNA in this costume design. Now, 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:42.280 in that episode, like you said, we mainly ended up 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:47.240 talking about natural uh properties of blood types, what evolutionary 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:50.320 pressures drove the development of different blood types, how that 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:53.119 functions in medicine, and then I think we also talked 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:56.840 about some pseudo scientific beliefs about blood types and personality 0:02:56.880 --> 0:03:00.120 and psychology. But I think we only briefly mentioned in 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.919 the possibility of synthetic blood or using something other than 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.040 human blood in your veins. Yeah, that's right, we did. 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:09.560 We didn't get into the topic all that much, and 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:14.919 subsequently we had some listeners suggested for October twenty fair. 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:18.600 So here we are now, first and foremost, we should 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:22.160 really establish what blood literally is and maybe a little 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:26.640 bit about what it metaphorically is. So blood is technically 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.639 both a fluid and a tissue, since it's made out 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:34.120 of similar specialized cells suspended in a liquid matrix of plasma. 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.000 It carries oxygen and nutrients to the cells and carries 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:41.640 off carbon dioxide and other waste products. The heart pumps 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.240 it through the body, but it's also part of the 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:47.640 larger circulatory system. So organs like the kidney and the 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:50.520 lung are also important to blood. And of course, if 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:52.960 we lose enough blood in a short enough period of time, 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.160 we die, as we all know, yes, uh. And it's 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.280 it's amazing to stop and think how blood is not 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:03.600 just in your body but constantly moving throughout it, you know, 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:06.800 like while you're alive, it never stops. This is one 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:09.960 of those ideas that sometimes makes me feel the you know, 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:12.360 the flame run under my skin. It's it's just a 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.280 little too creepy thinking about how even when I'm sitting 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.279 perfectly still and perfectly at rest, the blood is still going. 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:22.760 It's rushing through every inch of me. And that's true 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:24.400 for all of us, of course. And so one thing 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:26.919 I was wondering actually is how long does it take 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:29.800 for each red blood cell to circulate all the way 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:32.440 through your body and make it back to the heart. Uh. 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:34.680 I was reading an interesting Q and A by the 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:37.039 Naked Scientists where they worked out the math on this, 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:39.800 and I thought this was pretty cool. So it depends 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:42.560 on a number of factors, but their estimate was that 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:46.880 for most people, the body performs a complete blood circuit 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:51.040 roughly every minute. And they found this because the average 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:53.960 adult has you know, roughly five leaders of blood in 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.320 the body. The average heart pumps about seventy milli leaders 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:00.000 of blood every time it beats, and the average rest 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.720 sting a heart rate is something like seventy beats per minute. 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:05.440 And if you multiply all these together, you find that 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:08.400 the heart circulates about four point nine are close to 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:11.960 five leaders of blood every minute. So on average, it 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:15.120 probably takes about one minute for your heart to circulate 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:19.000 your entire blood volume. And it does this minute after 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:23.159 minute after minute until you die. Isn't that crazy the 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.560 longer you look at it. Yeah, this idea of this 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:30.360 endless river of blood just circulating through your body. Now, blood, 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:34.840 of course, also has taken on various uh additional connotations, 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:41.040 connotations of heredity, class, race, violence, sacrifice, and more. I 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:45.159 was reading an article titled bio Securitization, the Quest for 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:49.080 Synthetic Blood and the Taming of Kinship by Cath Weston. 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:52.159 The author gets gets a bit deeper into the connotations 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:55.239 that will be discussing today, but there were several aspects 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:57.839 worth highlighting. First of all, just the idea of royal 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.760 blood and the divine right of kings. The idea that 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:04.520 there's like literally, there's something in the bloodline. UM. The 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.679 idea of blood is a signifier of kinship, the idea 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:11.040 of the idea that your relatives are your blood relatives, etcetera. 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:14.120 And UH. An interesting thing that Weston points out to 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:18.320 is a historical tidbit is that blood transfusion UH, during 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:21.760 its history has been objected to for both religious reasons 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:23.560 and we'll get into an example of that in a bit, 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:28.320 but also for reasons steeped in racist ideologies. UM. And 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:31.279 so the you know that the metaphorical idea of blood 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:35.520 has often seemed to muddy our biological understanding of blood. 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:37.560 I think what this comes down to is that in 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:40.680 many ways blood is seen as some kind of essence. 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:43.040 That it's not just a part of the body that 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:46.520 plays a particular role in um in energy and the 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:49.640 oxygenation of tissues and the removal of waste products and 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.440 the circulation of chemicals, hormones and things throughout the body, 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:57.040 but it also is somehow the soul of the thing. 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:01.919 It There are properties inherent rent to the animal or 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:06.320 the human that are represented by or borne through the blood. 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.720 In particular. Yeah, it gets kind of weird. When you 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:11.800 think about the fact that, like, on one hand, to 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:14.080 think that the blood is not us, that the blood 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:16.960 is just this this oil that we run on, like 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.040 that's that's not completely correct. Like the blood we we 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:21.920 are blood. The blood is part of our body again, 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:25.400 it's it's tissue and a liquid. But on the other hand, 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:27.680 we're not just the blood. It's not like if you 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:29.560 drained our blood out and put us in a jar, 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:32.360 that's not us in the jar and an empty shell 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:36.840 over here. Like I'm I'm reminded of of myths, for instance, 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:40.680 that involve something like blood in other beings, like the 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.520 episode we did on Tallos the Bronze automaton and the 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:46.720 idea that he had this I core in his body 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.680 that was like the magical substance that that made him function, 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.720 and that that reveals a lot about how blood was 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:57.480 was considered in prior ages. Yeah, it's like the oil 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.120 and the car engine. But it's also the it's somehow magical, 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.520 it's somehow bearing the properties of godhood. And when you 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:06.920 take out the plug and allow all of the eye 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:08.760 cord to drain, now that you just kind of comes 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:11.800 to a halt. Yeah. So indeed, like the idea of 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:14.320 taking the blood from one person, the blood that is 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:17.160 part of that person, in putting it into another person. 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:19.800 You know that that that opens up the door for 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:22.360 a lot of you know, I guess, uh, you know, 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:25.120 metaphorical ideas about what that means. What does it mean 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.440 that that person is now in me um or what 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:30.480 orient in the when there is an injury? What does 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:32.319 it mean that a lot of me is now like 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:36.120 on the pavement. That sort of thing. Now, that brings 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.320 us to what we're mainly going to be talking about today, 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:41.679 the idea of blood transfusions. Again, if you lose too 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:44.440 much blood in a short period of time, you can die. 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:46.600 One way that we know that that can be prevented 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:50.840 today is by adding more blood, assuming it is the 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:54.160 correct sort of blood. When a blood transfusion is done correctly, 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:57.560 can save lives. It's you know, this is I think 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.319 something that most of us are familiar with. H And 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:03.160 as we detailed in last year's episode, which I think 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:07.120 we recently reran uh in our feed UH. One does 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:09.640 have to get it just right to respect the different 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:12.960 blood types. And this was a significant hurdle to overcome 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:17.600 in medical science totally. But the idea of synthetic blood 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:20.000 or a blood substitute, you know, the idea of there 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.680 being something other than blood that you could fill one 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:27.719 up with when you're you're facing a life threatening shortage. UM. 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:31.080 The key argument here would be, you know, something could 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:34.120 be manufactured ahead of time and to some degree kept 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:37.080 on a shelf for use in times of emergency. So 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:39.719 this was, you know, just decreasing to some extent the 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.240 reliance on blood and tissue donation. UM. I think it's 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:45.040 also been argued that this would be ideal if you 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:48.440 were dealing with a very far flung situation. You can't 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:50.960 have a proper blood bank on hand, but perhaps you 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:53.080 have some sort of short term substitute that can be 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:55.200 used instead. But of course, the other side of the 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:58.280 scenario is that such blood would be a product not 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.640 unlike true blood from the v show that we mentioned earlier. 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:05.719 We'll discuss where we are in our quest for a 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.880 true blood substitute, but first we want to explore some 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.560 of the earliest and really some of the weirdest and 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:16.920 grossest ideas for synthetic blood. It's really a wonderfully bizarre 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:19.640 bit of history. So one of the sources I was 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:23.720 Looking at Here is titled Artificial Blood by Suma and Sarkar, 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.000 and it was published in two thousand and eight by 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:29.439 the Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine. And in this 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:32.000 the author points out that the notion of artificial blood 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:34.439 has pretty much stirred in the human mind for as 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:37.520 long as people have bled to death from their injuries. 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:41.439 Like we've we've realized that there's something and and this 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:43.240 can get kind of I think, kind of vague and 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:45.840 magical as to the you know, the idea that blood 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:49.280 is important and if we lose it we can die, 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.280 and hey have its loss means death. Perhaps it's uh 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:57.720 to add blood is to add life or to restore it. Now, 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:00.480 certainly there's a there's a mix of magic and and 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:04.040 early medicine here. Uh Sarkar points to ink and folklore 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:08.720 depicting something arguably like blood transfusion. I've also seen it 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:13.960 pointed out elsewhere that Odysseus temporarily resuscitates underworld shades by 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:18.439 offering them um blood sacrifice in the Odyssey. The idea 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:21.959 of blood as if not a biological underpinning of life, 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:24.400 you know, something tied up with our conception of the 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:29.040 life force. That that passage in the Odyssey is pretty stirring. 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:32.200 I was looking at a Robert Fagel's translation of it, 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:37.199 and basically, Odysseus is instructed to um to to flay 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:40.280 and then burn these um the the the animals and 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:43.320 sacrificial rams or what have you, in order to like 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:45.760 draw in the spirits of the dead so that he 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:48.040 can commune with them. And then of course later on 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:51.200 he does it. Uh. And it's it's it's actually really 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:53.880 rather creepy. Yes, And I would say one reason is 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:57.280 that it contains this older Greek view of the afterlife, 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:00.560 sort of the pre Platonic view of the afterlife in 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.600 Greek thought, which is less the idea of you know, 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:07.680 places of possible reward or punishment, and more the idea 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:11.199 that everyone who dies just dwells forever. In this miserable, 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:16.520 confused dungeon of shades. All right, on that wonderfully spooky note, 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:18.600 We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:26.800 back with tales of early blood transfusions. Thank alright, we're 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:30.280 back now in talking about substitutes for human blood that 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:32.960 can be hooked up to your veins. One of the 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:36.240 easiest places you know, you can imagine people would have looked, 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:39.920 is to the blood of other animals, that's right, yeah, 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:42.080 and uh and at this at this point, we're gonna 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.880 we're gonna move to around uh sixteen sixteen, because that's 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:48.960 when a man by the name of William Harvey described 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:51.960 blood circulation, which is going to be key, just a 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:54.560 better understanding of like what's actually going on with blood. 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:59.280 And in the following years, numerous substances were tried out 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:01.920 as a stand in for human blood. And the list 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:04.800 provided by Sarkar in that article I cited earlier is 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:10.439 pretty horrific. It includes beer, urine, milk, plant resins, and 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:15.240 of course sheep blood. Now, sheep's blood is at least blood, right, 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:17.400 so at least it has that going for it. And 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:22.240 and this is known as zeno transfusion. The first documented 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:27.400 zeno transfusion was conducted by French physicians Jean Baptiste Duni 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.760 and Paul Imarez in sixteen sixty seven, and it apparently 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:36.560 was successful between a fifteen year old boy and a lamb. Uh. Yeah, 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:40.520 so this first one was largely reported as successful. I 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:42.680 think that could be defined in a number of ways, 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:46.319 depending on what you what you call success. At least 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.400 it was reported that the fifteen year old boy felt 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:53.680 good afterwards. But this whole saga of Jean Baptiste Ani 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:57.840 is actually I started looking into this a little bit deeper, 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:00.920 and the more I looked, the weirder and weirder of God. 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:03.839 So I want to take a digression here to talk 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:08.000 about Denny and his his historical context. So one of 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:10.880 the papers I want to look at is by Benjamin H. 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:14.040 Chin Ye and I. N. H chin Ye published in 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:17.520 the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History in two sixteen, called 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:22.000 Blood Transfusion and the Body and Early Modern France. Now, 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:25.360 a lot of this paper is concerned with what medical 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:29.840 worldview guided the work of late seventeenth century physicians like 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:34.080 Denny and Denise contemporaries, and the authors argued that the 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:37.920 physicians of France in this time did not really have 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:42.000 a unified system of anatomical theory guiding their work, but 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:46.840 rather a somewhat contradictory patchwork of contemporary natural philosophy and 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:54.120 anatomical research with a received background of galenic humoralism. So 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:57.360 this is the system that you're probably pretty familiar with 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:02.080 by this time that views health issues as largely related 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:07.760 to the balance and status of the four humors blood, flim, 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:11.200 black bile, and yellow bile. This is received from UH, 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:14.520 not invented by, but sort of shaped and received by 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:18.120 the Roman physician Galen. Now, the authors of this paper 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:23.000 tell the story of the first documented Zeno transfusion with 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:26.160 some quotes from the report at the time. As you said, 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:28.960 the patient was a fifteen year old boy, and he 0:15:29.000 --> 0:15:34.440 had already been through twenty rounds of blood letting. This 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:38.720 was in order quote, to assuage the excessive heat that 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:42.120 was a result of the boy's violent fever. And in 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:47.720 galenic theory, blood is associated with heat and excitation. This 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:49.800 is part of the place we get the idea of 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:52.840 being sanguine, right, you know, having an excess of blood 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:56.760 makes you sort of a brilliant and excited and energetic. 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:00.800 But this could be bad in in UH, in galenic thinking, 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:04.560 by causing fevers, by causing mania, and that sort of thing. 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:08.800 So they let this guy's blood twenty times, and after 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:13.000 the twenty bleedings quote, his wit seemed wholly sunk, his 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:17.080 memory perfectly lost, and his body so heavy and drowsy 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.560 that he was not fit for anything all right. So, 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:25.040 so basically a situation where the bathtub was too hot. Uh, 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:28.120 let some of the bathwater out. Now it seems a 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:30.560 bit too cold. Right. The problem is that, yeah, he's 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:33.760 he's appearing sluggish. That seems something is wrong with his brain. 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:37.520 Maybe he doesn't have memories or much energy. Uh. So 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:42.600 Denny counters this by starting a transfusion. He draws blood 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:46.000 from the carotid artery of a lamb, and then that 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:49.640 blood goes into the vein in the boy's arm. Ultimately, 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:53.240 the boy received about nine ounces of lamb blood and 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:57.040 then Denny wrote that quote afterwards, he hath no longer 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:00.840 that slowness of spirit nor heaviness of body, which before 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:05.080 rendered him unfit for anything. He grows fat visibly and 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.120 in brief is a subject of amazement to all those 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:11.600 that know him and dwell with him. So Denny concludes, Yeah, 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:13.879 it seems like he's doing good. Uh. And this was 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:19.320 on June sixteen sixty seven. But blood transfusions can be unpredictable. 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:23.240 There can be wildly different reactions and different patients depending 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:28.080 on often how the host's immune system in particular responds 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:31.560 to what's being put into the veins and as we've 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:33.720 been talking about. Despite being on the cutting edge of 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:38.040 seventeenth century anatomy and new surgical techniques, Denny was also 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:41.199 still in the grip of Galenism, which had been, you know, 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:44.400 a dominant force in European medicine since the Roman Empire, 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:49.359 and which attributed the bulk of medical pathologies to imbalances 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:53.159 or corruptions in the four humors. And Deny himself, he 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:55.960 agreed with this. He believed, quote, the greatest part of 0:17:56.000 --> 0:18:00.359 our diseases are but results of the distemper and corrupt 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.720 of the blood. Now he doesn't say quite every disease, 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:06.480 but you can imagine he thinks most of them. So like, oh, no, 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:10.160 you've got arthritis. Uh, your problem is you've got bad blood. 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:13.880 Or you know, you've got, oh a fever. I think 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:15.760 that's that's a blood issue. We've got to get some 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:19.320 of that blood out. And so, as a result, he believed, 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:23.440 quote the speediest and commonest remedy they have in practice 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:28.320 is to evacuate the same by phlebotomy. Phlebotomy means blood letting, 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:33.399 or else refresh it and cool it by julips. Uh So, 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.080 in other words, if you know, for most diseases. The 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:38.320 cause is bad blood and the best treatment is to 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:42.120 drain the blood out or possibly to give the patient julips. 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:44.960 The paper doesn't explain what julips means here, so I 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:48.280 tried to look this up. I think what julips refers 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:52.000 to here is a flavored drink, for example, rose water 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:54.800 sweetened with sugar syrup. All right, so this is when 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:56.879 we talked to say about a mint julip. This is 0:18:57.480 --> 0:18:59.879 the same word. Yeah. I think it was later on 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.560 that julip came to often have alcoholic connotations. I think 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:06.080 at this time it just would have meant a flavored drink, 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:08.920 not necessarily with alcohol in it. I don't know why 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:11.159 that is thought to deal with corruption of the blood, 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:13.200 but that is amazing, you know. Can you imagine you 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.320 show up at the hospital with dingay fever or whatever 0:19:16.359 --> 0:19:18.960 and they're like, we could use some rose water. Yeah, 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:22.040 Or if the or the two possible treatments on the 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:25.520 table are bleeding or a sweet drink, it's like, yeah, 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:28.440 essentially you're gonna have kool aid or they're going to 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:31.080 drain you into a bucket. Well, it seems like between 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:33.800 the two, Dennis kind of favored one over the other. 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:36.639 It seems like he was a bleeder. And yeah that 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:40.119 that kid had not had twenty julips prior to the 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:41.800 lamb blood. To be fair, I don't know how many 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:45.400 julips he had, but they did bleed him twenty times. Uh, 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.240 maybe you got a julip every time. Who knows. It's 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:50.879 like the brownie they give you and the when you 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:53.880 go to donate blood, you know you get brownies. Oh man, 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:57.560 I get um like peanut better crackers. Sometimes I get 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:00.800 what is it that's a special tree? Oh, nutter butters 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:04.399 sometimes there I've seen the Nutter butters. Yeah, that confirmed 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:08.760 in my experience, Like it forces me to equate peanut 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:12.120 butter with the blood. Like basically, you know, we're thinking 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:14.440 about the same thing here. It's like, well I lost 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:16.399 some blood, gotta get some peanut butter in there. That 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:19.320 taste of the Nutter butter or the what is it's 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.640 I was trying to remember the name of the little 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.680 brownie that's got the colorful sprinkle on top that they 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:29.400 give you sometimes and Seth chimed in there called cosmic brownies. 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:31.760 We think, yeah, I've never heard of that. I mean 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.720 like space brownies. I believe Seth space cakes. But I 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:38.760 don't think you should have one of those after blood donation. 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:42.240 You should have some space shrimp cocktail after blood donation. 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:46.640 But anyway, okay, So, so bleedings, bleedings, all those bleedings 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.600 obviously that Denny loves. They can really take a toll. 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:52.560 As described, you know what happened to this fifteen year old. 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:57.400 So Denise saw blood transfusion from animals as a perfect 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:01.359 compliment to blood letting. In his words, it's quote the 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:05.920 old and corrupt being first evacuated, could then make room 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:08.959 for the new and pure. So in the case of 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.720 the June sixteen sixty seven transfusion, this teenage boy, he's 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:15.120 blood twenty times to bring down his fever. He's pretty 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:17.439 low after that, and then Lamb's blood is used to 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:22.159 revive him with a fresh, clean, non corrupted supply. But 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:26.159 Denny did not stop there with the xeno transfusions. Later 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:30.240 that same year, Denny also transfused sheep's blood into the 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:33.720 veins of a healthy forty five year old Sedan chairman. 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:36.040 Now that means he was one of those guys who 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.639 carries fancy people around in the litter, you know, so 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:40.239 if you're fancy and you don't want to get your 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:42.600 boots wet. You can ride in a box where four 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:45.240 guys carry you on poles. So you have to imagine 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:48.160 if if this guy is a professional sedan chairman, he's 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:50.760 probably pretty fit. Right, Yeah, he's got to be kind 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.239 of a hoss. And for that reason, I've seen this 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:57.800 case and the idea that there's no identified cause for it. 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:00.240 It seems like this was maybe a negative control role, 0:22:00.400 --> 0:22:03.520 just like seeing what a transfusion does into a healthy guy. 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:06.600 And reportedly this guy was fine. And then after that, 0:22:06.720 --> 0:22:10.240 Denny performed a transfusion of Calf's blood on a Swedish 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:13.880 and nobleman who was dying of an unspecified illness in Paris, 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:17.600 and the first transfusion this guy got seemed to sort 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:20.480 of enliven him, bringing him back a bit, freshen him up, 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:23.160 But then he died while in the middle of receiving 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:26.359 his second transfusion. We don't know why he died. But 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:29.520 then finally the authors tell the story of how Denny 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:33.360 performed again a similar operation on a thirty four year 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:37.440 old man named Antoine Moroy in an attempt to treat 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:41.400 a supposed mental illness. I read this case described more 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:45.760 fully in another paper by James G. Chandler, Teresa L. Chin, 0:22:45.920 --> 0:22:49.600 and Max V. Wool Hour called direct blood Transfusions in 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:53.840 the Journal of Vascular Surgery from and I was having 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:58.359