Transfusion Medicine in Chicago, Before and After the “Blood Bank”

Although history states correctly that Bernard Fantus coined the name “blood bank” in Chicago in 1937, his was only one of many contributions of Midwest America to the new therapy of blood transfusion. Chicago was at the center of the movement before and after then, anticipating the modern era with the first practical method for direct donor-to-recipient transfusion and staging a secret clinical trial of cadaver blood. That successful trial of cadaver blood may have presaged the first functional cadaver kidney transplant, performed at the same hospital several years later. Modern-day technologies for blood collection, transfusion, and safety testing also have many roots in Chicago.