when did blood transfusions become safer and why
Blood transfusion It was not until 1901, when the Austrian Karl Landsteiner discovered three human blood groups (O, A, and B), that blood transfusion was put onto a scientific basis and became safer.
Spanish flu research In the worldwide 1918 flu pandemic, "physicians tried everything they knew, everything they had ever heard of, from the ancient art of bleeding patients, to administering oxygen, to developing new vaccines and sera (chiefly against what we now call Hemophilus influenzae—a name derived from the fact that it was originally considered the etiological agent—and several types of pneumococci). Only one therapeutic measure, transfusing blood from recovered patients to new victims, showed any hint of success."[21]