ON AVERAGE it takes about fifteen donations of blood to carry out a liver
transplant, and as many as twenty for a cardiac operation. Needless to say,
transfusions are the lifeblood of modern surgery, and Britain鈥檚 National Blood
Service celebrates its 50th anniversary in September. Now donors can use the
Net to volunteer to give blood at http://uk-commerce.com/bloodservice/.
The Blood Service鈥檚 pages reveal the fascinating history of blood
transfusions. The first successful transfusion 鈥� from one animal to another 鈥�
was carried out in 1665 by one Richard Lowe. But the practice understandably
fell out of favour after 1668, when a man died after being given calf鈥檚
blood.
Blood transfusion only became practicable after the discovery of blood
groups in 1900. Thereafter progress in transfusion technology was associated
with war: the use of sodium citrate to prevent clotting and refrigerators to
store blood in the First World War, and the development of blood banks during
the Spanish Civil War.
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THESE days, donors only have to give 450 millilitres 鈥� 118 millilitres less
than the old imperial pint that was demanded when the service was set up in
1946. 鈥淎
pint! Why that鈥檚 nearly an armful,鈥� as Tony Hancock put it in one of his best
known sketches, The Blood Donor.
The Blood Donor first flickered across the nation鈥檚 black-and-white TV
screens on 23 June 1961, a detail which can be found on The Official Tony
Hancock Appreciation Society Homepage at
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/鈮nac/index.ht ml. The page lists all of Hancock鈥檚
broadcasts, both on radio and TV, and features the Internet Ham, an electronic
version of the society鈥檚 newsletter in 鈥� allegedly 鈥� 鈥淐heam-o-Vision鈥�.
NATURALLY enough, the Blood Service steers well clear of links to
http://www.literature.org/Works/Bram-Stoker/, which has a complete version of
Stoker鈥檚 novel Dracula. The king of bloodsucking is one of an eclectic
selection of out-of-copyright classics, including works by Charles Darwin,
Mary Shelley, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Someone may find these online
classics a valuable research tool, but even Netropolitan must admit to a
preference for books when it comes to reading that much prose.
NETROPOLITAN is at edit@news.newsci.ipc.co.uk. Put 鈥淣etropolitan鈥� in the
subject line, and please note that this is not a mailing list. New 杏吧原创鈥檚
Web site Planet Science is at .
