In 1667, a Doctor Saved a Dying Boy With Sheep's Blood

[00:00:00]June 15th, 1667, a French doctor [music] saved a dying boy by pumping sheep's blood into his veins. In Paris, a 15-year-old boy lay near death, bled by leeches 20 times.

[00:00:14]The royal physician, Jean-Baptiste Denys, ran a silver tube [music] from a live lamb's artery into the boy's vein, transfusing 12 oz of sheep's blood.

[00:00:24]Within hours, the boy was sitting up, asking for food. Denys tried it on a second patient, a laborer, and he lived, too. Paris was stunned. Denys became a medical celebrity, [music] performing transfusions on dying patients across the city. Everyone agreed it was a breakthrough. Humanity had cracked the secret of life itself.

[00:00:46]Then his third patient died, and Denys was [music] charged with murder, until they discovered the wife had been poisoning him with arsenic. The damage was done. France banned blood transfusions for the next 148 years.

[00:01:00]Follow for the history you weren't told.