As one writer put it in a 1965 issue of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, “War has never lavished gifts on humanity; an exception may be made for the impetus and popularization of the use of blood and plasma … attributable to the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Korean conflict.”19 Perhaps more than any other intervention, transfusion and banking—cellular therapy—stands as the most significant medical legacy of the war.
