Blood

Question 1

what is health?

Answer 1

lack of illness. WHO “complete physical, social, and mental well being, not only absence of disease”

Question 2

blood in the bible

Answer 2

• curses (10 plagues of Egypt, God turns water into blood)
• signs
• gifts (e.g. blood of Christ, drinking wine)

Question 3

humours

Answer 3

four elements that need to be in balance, put forward by Hoppocrates 460 BCE who suggested that humours were liquids in the body. Sickness is the disequilibrium in temperment and health, caused by inhaling/absorbing vaours. Malaria, transmitted by mosquitos, was often contracted after standing next to a still, smelly pond.

Yellow Bile // choleric (emotionally unstable + extraverted)
Black bile // melancholic (emotionally unstable + introverted)
Phlegm // phlegmatic (emotionally + introverted)
Blood // sanguine (emotionally stable + extroverted)

humours were important until 1800s

Question 4

blood letting

Answer 4

late antiquity to 19th century
through deliberate cuts or lecches
fundamentally related to modern health care (phlebotomy and blood testing)

Question 5

circulation

Answer 5

17th century. William Harvey proved that the heart pumped blood around the body mid-1600s by experimenting/dissected live dogs. Fundamental to our understanding of the body today.

Question 6

transfusion

Answer 6

mid 1600s. French and English competed to complete transfusion.

• humans were transfused with blood of calves & lambs, which was usually unsuccessful because blood typing wasn’t understood
• people realized that close family member transfusion were more likely to be successful

Question 7

Jean-Baptiste Denis

Answer 7

1667 kidnapped Antoine Mauroy. Looked for someone with a humoural imbalance; someone who looked mad - transfusion with goat blood was believed to calm madness - his wife starts to campaign against blood transfusions

Question 8

James Blundell

Answer 8

1818 English obstetrician had a patient who hemmorraged during child birth. injected via syringe blood from father of child. 1st successful human-human transfusions.

Question 9

Karl Landsteiner

Answer 9

1901 discovered blood types A, B, C

Question 10

Red Cross Tainted Blood Scandal

Answer 10

early 1980s. impacted blood screening, who can donate, when they can donate, etc. 1997 Krever Report reported dysfunctional relationship between Red Cross and government. were not testing for Hep C, not moving to safer supplies

Question 11

Vampires

Answer 11

account for misfortune, rooted in mythology and biology. When graves were unearthed, pale corpses with blood from mouths (part of natural decomposition process) were mistaken for supernatural