Blood

Abstract

Blood as an English noun, verb, and expletive has myriad meanings. The two preponderant ones—as a bodily humour and as the stuff of kinship—are linked by the assumption that blood is the vital fluid, the bearer of life. The English word is of Teutonic origin. When denoting the fluid (blod, blude, bloud), it can be traced to Old English texts of the 11th century. When signifying racial and familial connections, it dates from the 14th century.During the Renaissance, blood was, interchangeably, the basis of academic medicine and popular explications of human nature. It is impossible to demarcate a strict medical usage from the word's use elsewhere. In 1398 an English translation of a medieval treatise on the properties of things talks of “foure humours, Blood, Flewme, Colera and Melencolia”, while the King James Bible of 1611 states “the life of all flesh is the blood thereof”. Figuratively and literally at this time, temperament, feeling, and emotions all lie in the blood.By 1650 ancient ideas of blood had been challenged, especially by William Harvey's account of the circulation in 1628. At this time a band of virtuosi, including Sir Christopher Wren, experimented with blood transfusion. In 1667 Richard Lower transfused blood from a sheep to a mad clergyman, Arthur Coga. Here a new medical interest was entwined with popular ideas; perhaps blood from the quintessentially innocent creature, the lamb, could restore purity (and thus sanity) to the corrupted vital fluid of the madman.From about 1800 onwards the modern technical language of blood was created. Yet it failed to demystify it. Belief in vampires was fuelled by Bram Stoker's Dracula of 1897. In the 20th century, blood became a potent word to describe racial and national affiliations, notably in Nazi ideology. Between the wars, blood groups, which had been discovered by Karl Landsteiner in 1900, were used for racial typing. Blood was an emotive term that pervaded eugenics. In this period too, it was stated in the medical literature that sickle cell anaemia was a dominant inherited disorder of “Negro blood”; a stigmatising phrase in everyday use. After World War II the anaemia was designated a recessive disorder manifested in molecular abnormality: a view that signalled the decline of the doctor as “race detective” and the rise of the “molecular engineer”. Rather than changing our view of blood, however, science only seemed to confirm the age-old belief that it is the key to life's deepest secrets. Blood as an English noun, verb, and expletive has myriad meanings. The two preponderant ones—as a bodily humour and as the stuff of kinship—are linked by the assumption that blood is the vital fluid, the bearer of life. The English word is of Teutonic origin. When denoting the fluid (blod, blude, bloud), it can be traced to Old English texts of the 11th century. When signifying racial and familial connections, it dates from the 14th century. During the Renaissance, blood was, interchangeably, the basis of academic medicine and popular explications of human nature. It is impossible to demarcate a strict medical usage from the word's use elsewhere. In 1398 an English translation of a medieval treatise on the properties of things talks of “foure humours, Blood, Flewme, Colera and Melencolia”, while the King James Bible of 1611 states “the life of all flesh is the blood thereof”. Figuratively and literally at this time, temperament, feeling, and emotions all lie in the blood. By 1650 ancient ideas of blood had been challenged, especially by William Harvey's account of the circulation in 1628. At this time a band of virtuosi, including Sir Christopher Wren, experimented with blood transfusion. In 1667 Richard Lower transfused blood from a sheep to a mad clergyman, Arthur Coga. Here a new medical interest was entwined with popular ideas; perhaps blood from the quintessentially innocent creature, the lamb, could restore purity (and thus sanity) to the corrupted vital fluid of the madman. From about 1800 onwards the modern technical language of blood was created. Yet it failed to demystify it. Belief in vampires was fuelled by Bram Stoker's Dracula of 1897. In the 20th century, blood became a potent word to describe racial and national affiliations, notably in Nazi ideology. Between the wars, blood groups, which had been discovered by Karl Landsteiner in 1900, were used for racial typing. Blood was an emotive term that pervaded eugenics. In this period too, it was stated in the medical literature that sickle cell anaemia was a dominant inherited disorder of “Negro blood”; a stigmatising phrase in everyday use. After World War II the anaemia was designated a recessive disorder manifested in molecular abnormality: a view that signalled the decline of the doctor as “race detective” and the rise of the “molecular engineer”. Rather than changing our view of blood, however, science only seemed to confirm the age-old belief that it is the key to life's deepest secrets.