Medicine: Sheep's Blood Bath

When the medical world was agog over the discovery that blood circulates through the body, imaginative surgeons tried to transfuse sheep's blood into human patients weakened by too generous bloodletting. Since they had never heard of such things as protein compatibility, it is small wonder that most patients died. In 1678 the French Parliament banned transfusions. Nowadays, no doctor would dream of transfusing animal blood to man. But last week, the medical world was again agog over a report that Italian physicians had used a sheep's blood to help clear the system of a woman dying of mercury poisoning.

In London's medical...

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