Medico-legal aspects of blood type testing.

It is a trite observation that there is nothirg new under the sun, but it seams that the medico-legal applications of blood-group testing cannot be regarded as merely another of the applications of modern science for according to Furuhatai (1919) the significance of mixing the blood of the parties in a paternity suit was well known to the Chinese as early as 1247 A.D. So far as Europe was concerned, however, this knowledge appears to have remained unknown for it is not until the nineteenth century that the iso-haemagglutination reaction is described in the literature. The lateness of the recognition of this phenomenon is rather surprising in view of the fact that blood transfusions had been attempted since at least the seventeenth century, if not earlier, and many of the fatal accidents which resulted from these transfusions were undodbteAy due to haemagglutination. The possibility of transfusion was actually suggested as early as the sixteenth century by Hieronymus Cardanus and Magnus Pegalius, whilst Andreas Libavius (1615) actually described a suitable technique, although it is uncertain whether he carried out the experiment that he described. Most modern work in this field dates, however, from the publication, in 1628 of Harvey's Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu. Cordis et Saneuinis in Animalibus. The first reported successful transfusions from one animal to another, usually ascribed to Francesco Fall, was carried out shortly after the publication of Harvey's work being performed in 1654. This was soon followed by further experiments, carried out in England by such persona as Sir Christopher Wren, Sir Robert Boyle Edmund King and Thomas Cox. In 1665 a second successful transfusion was carried out by Richard Lower in. England who transfused the blood of one dog into another.