In 1667, in France, a 15-year-old boy was stricken with fever. His family consul
ID: 192768 • Letter: I
Question
In 1667, in France, a 15-year-old boy was stricken with fever. His family consulted local physicians, who prescribed bleeding by leeches – a common treatment at the time for many ailments. After 20 leech treatments, his family consulted Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys (physician to King Louis XIV). Dr. Denys decided that the boy was overbled and would only live with a blood transfusion. He transfused several ounces (exact # unknown, probably only a few) of blood from a sheep into the boy and the boy lived. He repeated this several times with mixed success, including an attempt in 1668 to a man with a “harmless form of insanity”. (It was thought that transfusing the blood of a lamb would help soothe the temperament of the recipient.)
1. Propose a reason, complete with background physiology, about why this might have worked.
Hint: today, blood transfusions are usually given 1 unit – about 1 pint – at a time.)
Explanation / Answer
Ans) The transfusion of blood from one species to another species is called Xenotransfusion. There are some basic physiology reason for the surival of the boy due to the transfusion of the blood This is because the blood corpuscles of the lamb or sheep has more similarilty with the human blood. The RBC of lambs and sheep ha s many characteristics similarity with the human RBC. The average life span of RBC of lamb and sheep is roughly 75 days in compared to 120 days of humans. Ther are some other similarities of RBC like RBCcount and RBC diameter are mostly same. For this reason the survival chance of the human recipent increases when transfused with other species blood . .