The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Oswald, serving in the French front of the US Medical Corps, began to think of blood as a mobile organ—restless, not just inside humans or between humans, but between national borders and battlefields. He collected O group blood from convalescing soldiers at one site, then packed sterile two-liter glass bottles containing citrated, dextrose-supplemented blood in ammunition boxes filled with sawdust and ice, and shipped them to the battlefield for use. In effect, Captain Oswald had established one of the first blood banks. (A more formal bank would be set up in Leningrad in 1932.) Gratitude poured in. “On the 13th June, you took my leg off above the knee,” one soldier wrote to Major Bruce Robertson in 1917, “and until I received blood from someone else, you considered the betting about 3 to 1 on my pegging out…. Can you find time to let me know the name and address of the man who gave me blood? I should much like to write to him.”

Oh; that's sweet. ☺️