A Brief History of the Early Years of Blood Transfusion at the Mayo Clinic: The First Blood Bank in the United States (1935)

At the Mayo Clinic in 1914, Francis McGrath modified an existing aspiration-injection apparatus and adapted it for arm-to-arm blood transfusions. Separately, in 1919, both Pemberton and Sanford described in detail the Mayo Clinic experience with more than 1000 transfusions between January 1915 and January 1918. Most transfusions were by the indirect citrate method from freshly drawn blood. In 1935, John Lundy established a bank of refrigerated blood for transfusions at Mayo Clinic and reported on the activity in that and subsequent years. The functioning clinical blood bank established by Lundy at Mayo Clinic predated that of Bernard Fantus in Chicago by almost 2 years.