Who Came Up with the Idea of Blood Banks?

William Mullen, in the Chicago Tribune (1-11-05):

After Dr. Bernard Fantus' healing powers in 1936 saved a woman's life in Cook County Hospital, the woman's husband asked if there was anything he could do for the physician as a token of gratitude.

"Uncle Bernard's twinkly eyes lit up when the woman's husband made the offer," said Fantus' niece, Adele Goldstein."For years he had been trying to get money to put together his idea of refrigerating and storing blood at the hospital."

For lack of a better term, he called his idea a"blood preservation laboratory," but later named it a blood bank, thinking"bank" would more clearly convey its function to the public because it required blood deposits before doctors could make withdrawals for patient use.

It was, an admirer said 50 years later,"a simple but profound idea." It also was a transformational idea that spread throughout the world quickly. Four years later blood banks would save millions of lives of wounded and injured in the violence of World War II. After the war, blood banks made possible new lifesaving surgeries and trauma treatments now considered routine.

The blood bank became the capstone to Fantus' remarkable career, highlighted in an exhibit at the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library. Free to the public, it runs through Feb. 7....