At the beginning of the 20th century, when there was no method to prevent blood from clotting, transfusions were performed using a surgical method developed by George Crile, a surgeon from Cleveland: this technique of direct arteriovenous transfusion was complex and difficult to achieve and meant that the donor sometimes lost use of his radial artery. In the first decades of the 20th century, several apparatuses appeared to connect the veins of donors and recipients. These three pictures taken in 1927 (see figures, Jean-Pierre Soulier collection) show an arm-to-arm transfusion performed by Arnault Tzanck, the pioneer of French transfusion, with the apparatus that he had designed.
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