Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th Century Medicine and Beyond

Boel Berner

Open Access Published by transcript Verlag 2020

Strange Blood

The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th Century Medicine and Beyond

Boel Berner

Volume 5 in the series Medical Humanities

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839451632

Overview
Contents

About this book

In the mid-1870s, the experimental therapy of lamb blood transfusion spread like an epidemic across Europe and the USA. Doctors tried to use it as a cure for tuberculosis, pellagra, and anemia; proposed it as a means to reanimate seemingly dead soldiers on the battlefield. It was a contested therapy because it meant crossing boundaries and challenging taboos.
The book takes the reader on a unique journey into hospital wards and lunatic asylums, physiological laboratories and 19th century wars. It presents a fascinating story of medical knowledge, ambitions, and concerns - a story that provides valuable lessons for current debates on the morality of medical experimentation and care.

Author / Editor information

Boel Berner is a sociologist, historian, and professor emerita at Linköping University in Sweden. In her research she investigates the character and power of technical and medical expertise, historically and today. She has studied technical education and work, the gendered nature of technical knowledge, household technology, and issues of risk. Her current work is oriented towards the history of medicine. It focuses, besides issues of blood donation and transfusion, on the politics of blood group analysis in the interwar years.

Reviews

O-Ton: »When Lamb-to-Human Blood Transfusions Were All the Rage« - Boel Berner im Interview with newbooksnetwork.com am 12.10.2020.
http://bit.ly/2IXzyrb

Besprochen in:
https://lithub.com, 12.10.2020
https://www.books-readers.com, 10 (2020)
Zeitsprung, 08.07.2020

Supplementary Materials

Leseprobe

Topics

Frontmatter Open Access Download PDF	1
Contents Open Access Download PDF	5
Prologue Open Access Download PDF	9
Introduction: ‘The mighty influence of strange blood’ Open Access Download PDF	11
PART I: SETTING THE SCENE
1. Using the blood of others Open Access Download PDF	17
2. Ambitions and connections Open Access Download PDF	31
PART II: PRACTICES
3. Blood on the battlefield Open Access Download PDF	45
4. Blood for the lungs Open Access Download PDF	61
5. Asylum experiments Open Access Download PDF	81
PART III: CONTROVERSY
6. Proofs and refutations Open Access Download PDF	105
7. Transgressions Open Access Download PDF	127
PART IV: THE FALL
8. Winding up Open Access Download PDF	145
Epilogue: The return Open Access Download PDF	159
Notes Open Access Download PDF	167
Sources and Literature Open Access Download PDF	183
Acknowledgements Open Access Download PDF	203
Index of Places Open Access Download PDF	205
Index of Names Open Access Download PDF	209

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 216
Keywords: 19th Century; Lamb Blood; Clinical Practice; Medical History; Medicine; Human; Animal; History of Medicine; Human-Animal Studies; History of Science; Cultural History; History

eBook

Published: May 27, 2020
ISBN: 9783839451632