When it came to storing blood, “the feeling in England,” wrote Victor Horsley Riddell, “is that this is carrying change too far.”58 Surgeons and doctors stuck to what they knew: blood should be used fresh if it was used at all. Fresh blood meant having the donor come to the patient, slice open a vein—the term was “cutting down”—and then convey the blood either by connecting the two veins (direct transfusion) or by using a syringe or pump to transfer the blood (indirect transfusion). Most donors expected money for their blood.
