Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 699

JOHN MARTYN (fl. 1660) An advertisement concerning the invention of the transfusion of blood. (In Philosophical transactions. Vol. 2, no. 27 (1667), pp. 489-490.) 21.4 cm.

In this communication of September 23, Martyn, printer to the Royal Society and publisher of the Philosophical transactions, takes issue with the matter of priority in transfusion mentioned in a letter written by Jean Baptiste Denis (d. 1704) to Henri Louis Habert de Montmor, an influential French patron of science. Originally dated June 25, 1667 and entitled "Une nouvelle manière de guarir plusieurs maladies par la transfusion du sang," the letter had appeared in English translation in the Transactions in July. Martyn hastens to point out that it was Lower (see No. 581) who performed the first transfusions and reported them in the Transactions on November 19 and December 17, 1666. Lower's experiments, done in 1665 and reported in 1666, involved transfusion of blood from one animal to another and it was not until November 23, 1667 that he performed a transfusion on a human. Denis transfused lamb's blood into a youth on June 15, 1667 at Paris.

See Related Record(s): 581

Gift of John Martin, M.D.