- Person
- Richard Lewisohn
- Lived
- 1875–1961
- Field
- Surgery
- From
- German-American
The story
Richard Lewisohn was born in Hamburg in 1875 to German Jewish parents. He trained in medicine at German universities, worked in pathology in Frankfurt and in surgery in Heidelberg, and in 1906 emigrated to New York, where he joined Mount Sinai Hospital.
At the time, blood transfusion was rare and difficult. Blood clots within minutes of leaving the body, so the only reliable method was direct transfusion, in which a surgeon joined a donor’s blood vessel to the patient’s. It required great skill, so only the most accomplished surgeons could do it, and donor and patient had to lie side by side.
Sodium citrate prevents clotting by binding the calcium blood needs to clot. In 1914 the Belgian physician Albert Hustin and, independently, Luis Agote in Buenos Aires used citrate in transfusions. The open question was dose: too little and the blood would clot, too much and the citrate would poison the patient. Working independently at Mount Sinai, Lewisohn found the optimal concentration, about 0.2 percent of the blood, with no more than about 5 grams per transfusion. He announced the method in New York on January 23, 1915, and published it in full that July.
With the citrate method, blood could be drawn into a flask and given to the patient later, and Lewisohn’s method kept it usable for up to about two days. Others soon extended storage to around two weeks. The technique was used in the First World War and introduced to British army medical services in 1917. Separating donor and patient in time and place made blood banks possible; the first in the United States opened at Cook County Hospital in Chicago in 1937. In 1955 the American Association of Blood Banks gave Lewisohn its Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award. Credit for transfusion is shared, with Landsteiner’s blood groups, Hustin’s and Agote’s first uses of citrate, and later storage improvements, but Lewisohn’s safe dose was a key practical step.
Why it matters
Blood donated today is mixed with citrate-based solutions so it can be stored and transfused later, letting hospitals keep blood ready for surgery, accidents, childbirth and the treatment of many diseases.
About Richard Lewisohn
Hamburg-born Mount Sinai surgeon who in 1915 found the safe dose of sodium citrate to stop donated blood clotting, helping make stored blood, blood banks and everyday transfusion possible.
Sources
- Richard Lewisohn Wikipedia
- Heroes of Progress, Pt. 4: Landsteiner and Lewisohn HumanProgress
- New Blood, circa 1914 The Scientist
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.