Timeline

14 moments that made blood science what it is. Each one is a publication, a first or a decision that can be looked up.

1. 1628William Harvey publishes De Motu Cordis: blood circulates.
2. 1674Antonie van Leeuwenhoek describes red blood cells under his microscope.
3. 1818James Blundell performs the first recorded transfusion of human blood to a patient.
4. 1901Karl Landsteiner describes the ABO blood groups.
5. 1914Sodium citrate is introduced as an anticoagulant, allowing blood to be stored.
6. 1937Bernard Fantus opens the first hospital blood bank in the United States, at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, and coins the name “blood bank”.
7. 1940Landsteiner and Alexander Wiener describe the Rh factor.
8. 1949Linus Pauling and colleagues show that sickle cell disease is caused by an abnormal haemoglobin molecule.
9. 1950Carl Walter and William P. Murphy Jr. introduce the plastic blood bag, which makes separating components practical.
10. 1959Max Perutz and colleagues work out the three-dimensional structure of haemoglobin; it appears in print early in 1960.
11. 1961James Till and Ernest McCulloch demonstrate blood-forming stem cells.
12. 1985Routine testing of collected blood for HIV begins.
13. 2001Imatinib is approved for chronic myeloid leukaemia — a drug designed against the specific molecular cause of a blood cancer.
14. 2023The first gene-editing therapy is approved, first in the United Kingdom, for sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta thalassaemia.