Transfusion of Blood.

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 259, 15 September 1874, Page 7

Transfusion of Blood.

Max Adeler writes to the Banbury News as follows :

A recent medical experiment has excited a considerable amount of interest in our village. My neighbour Simpson was nearlydead with consumption, and Dr Hopkins at last, in despair, concluded to try the effect of a transfusion of blood, of which he had heard so much lately. As no human being was willing to shed his blood for Simpson, the doctor bled Simpson's goat, and, opening a vein in Simpson's arm, he injected about two quarts of blood into the patient's system. Simpson immediately began to survive, but singular to relate, no sooner had his strength returned than he jumped out of bed, and, twitching his head about after the fashion of a goat, he made a savage attempt to butt the doctor. That medical gentleman, after having Simpson's head plunged against his stomach three or four times, took refuge in the closet, whereupon Simpson banged his head against the panel of the door a couple of times, and would probably have broken it to splinters had not his mother-in law entered at that moment and diverted his attention. One well-directed blow from Simpson's head floored her, and then, while she screamed for help, Simpson frolicked around over the floor, making assiduous efforts to nibble the green flowers in the ingrain carpet. When they called the hired man in and tied him down on the bed, an effort was made to interview him, but the only answer he could give to such questions as how he felt and when he wanted his medicine, was a " ba-a" precisely like that of the goat, and then he would strain himself in an effort to butt a hole in the headboard. The condition of the patient was so alarming, and Mrs Simpson was so indignant, that Dr Hopkins determined to undo the evil if possible. So he first bled Simpson freely, and then, by heavily bribing Simpson's Irishman, he procured fresh blood from him and injected Simpson the second time. Simpson is now as well as ever, excepting that he shocks his old republican friends by displaying an irresistible tendo.icy to vote oil the democratic ticket, and makes his mother-in-law mad by speaking with a strong brogue. But he has given up butting, and has never indulged in it since but once, and that was on Sunday, when one of the remaining corpuscles of goat's blood getting into his brain just as he was going into church, he butted the sexton half way up the aidle, and only recovered himself sufficiently to apologise just as the enraged official was about to floor him with a hymn-book.