10.6092/issn.2038-3460/18000
application/pdf
2038-3460
18000
1
en
Zezhou Yang
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Boel Berner, Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th Century Medicine and Beyond, Transcript Verlag, 2020
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
14
Book Reviews
2023-09-26
2023-09-13
2023-09-26
2023-09-26
197-200
TS
Zezhou Yang
2023/09/26
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/18000
197
SOAS University of London
2038-3460
1
en
200
Boel Berner, Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th Century Medicine and Beyond, Transcript Verlag, 2020
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/18000/16772
14
T/S                                                                                 BOOK REVIEWS


Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in
19th Century Medicine and Beyond
by Boel Berner (2020) Transcript Verlag.




Zezhou Yang
SOAS University of London


   Surrounded by anxious and curious families of patients in a sickroom, the local physician in-
stalls an unusual contraption between two bodies; one being the weak patient lying in bed, and
the other, a lively six-month-old lamb fastened to a board. Driven by the lamb’s heartbeat, its
blood flows into the patient’s body. The room falls silent as everyone awaits the outcome of this
strange transfusion process. This scene sets the stage for Boel Berner’s Strange Blood: The Rise
and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th Century Medicine and Beyond. Berner, an Emeri-
tus Professor of Sociology and History at Linköping University in Sweden, has extensively re-
searched the nexus of social development, technology, and power and presents her latest findings
in this book based on her project that explores the politics of blood during the interwar periods.
   Strange Blood delves into the use of lamb blood transfusion to treat patients with life-threat-
ening diseases, as part of a Western medical surge that appeared and disappeared suddenly in
late-nineteenth-century Europe. Why was lamb blood used, and why this specific kind of ani-
mal’s blood over others? These questions piqued my interest before embarking on this journey
with Berner. Fortunately, the author clarifies my confusion. Berner reveals that lamb blood was
never the exclusive option for transfusion, and a variety of other animals’ blood, including hu-
mans, dogs, calves, cows, and oxen, were all experimented with. The preference for using lamb
blood for transfusion arose from negotiations between various conditions and concepts. For
instance, it was believed that lamb blood had smaller blood cells, making it more capable of trav-
elling through blood vessels. Some individuals chose lamb blood for practical reasons, simply be-
cause it was more financially viable. Interestingly, Berner does not provide a simple and straight-
forward conclusion to these reasons, as some readers may expect. Instead, she interweaves these
explanations throughout the book, articulating them with intricate analyses of various historical
actors’ backgrounds, motivations, and methodologies. This writing style may seem unclear to
some readers, but it effectively conveys the historical complexity the book aims to impart.
   In general, Strange Blood poses questions such as “Why was there a sudden fervour for
transfusing strange blood? How was it carried out, by whom, and how did the patients react?
And, most importantly: did it work?” (p. 11). By examining these issues in nineteenth-cen-
tury Germany, Britain, Sweden, Italy, Russia, and the USA, this book employs a range of

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       T A. taI lian Journal of Science & eT chnology tu
                                                       S dies      © The Author(s) 2023
)14( p. 20-197 ISN 2038-46                                         Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
        DOI: 10.692/isn/180.23-46                                  www.tecnoscienza.net
Yang                                                                                                        198

primary historical materials to demonstrate how “lamb blood transfusion was, in many ways,
a transgression” (p. 12). The transgression-lens that Berner uses aligns this book with other
works in medical humanities (e.g., Lederer 2008) that reject the neutral, autonomous, and
linear conceptualisation of medical science and focus on the complex political and cultural
meanings, rather than merely medical and surgical importance. In Berner’s words,

       the experiment with lamb blood transfusion was a political phenomenon. It upset medical
       hierarchies and truths. It challenged medical knowledge, ethics and expertise, gave rise to
       controversy and debate. It had ramifications also outside the medical world. (p. 12)

   Berner’s approach to her ambitious inquiry is Foucauldian, in my opinion. Like Foucault, who
demonstrates how “sex is ‘put into discourse’” from eighteenth-century Europe to “the contem-
porary West” (Foucault 1980, 11), Berner also investigates the contested relationship between
power and knowledge production by revealing how specific knowledge of blood transfusion
was socially and culturally celebrated or stigmatized, supported or oppressed, and constructed or
destroyed. This book participates in the ongoing conversation in science and technology studies
that seeks to deconstruct and reconstruct the boundaries of so-called scientific knowledge.
   In addition to an engaging prologue and a clear introduction, the book is divided into
four sections. The first section provides a historical overview of blood transfusion, primarily
in the European context. Readers are then introduced to three marginal physicians, Oscar
Hasse, Franz Gesellius, and Joseph-Antoine Roussel, who were nevertheless influential in
promoting lamb blood transfusion in the 1870s. The second section shifts the narrative to
the development of lamb blood transfusion practices in various contexts. Readers embark on
thrilling journeys from battlefields to laboratories across the European continent, from sick
rooms in the German countryside to Italian asylums, and from Swedish spas to Russian trans-
fusion competitions. Along the way, readers encounter a diverse cast of characters, including
local physicians, medical equipment entrepreneurs, military surgeons, hospital doctors, and
physiologists. Their interventions in promoting or suppressing lamb blood transfusion prac-
tices were driven by personal ambitions intertwined with professional, cultural, and political
compromises, rather than purely scientific agendas. Moreover, Berner devotes ample space to
documenting the voices of patients who received lamb blood, providing a more comprehen-
sive depiction of traditionally marginalized stakeholders in this process.
   In my opinion, the third section is the heart of this book. After two lengthy but necessary sec-
tions that provide readers with essential information about lamb blood transfusion, this section
meticulously analyses the controversy surrounding it, making it a contested knowledge. Berner suc-
cessfully demonstrates that the conflicting voices for and against this particular medical treatment:

       signal a genuine uncertainty, not only about the effects of this particular intervention but, more
       generally, about how different kinds of medical evidence should be assessed and compared.
       Hospital and bedside based doctors tended to favour clinical experience and distrust animal
       experiments; physiologists thought quite the opposite. Still, the evidence was far from clear-
       cut; there were doubts on both sides as to the relevance of their respective arguments. (p. 117)
199                                                                       Tecnoscienza. 2023. 14(1)

   Overall, reading Strange Blood was a pleasurable experience for me. Although medical jar-
gon occasionally appears in the book, the language is generally accessible and easy to under-
stand. Additionally, the extensive use of multilingual (e.g., German, French, Italian, Swedish)
primary historical materials by Berner is undoubtedly one of the book’s most valuable assets.
These materials include news, journal pieces, personal accounts of doctors and patients, aca-
demic exchange, clinical records, and hospital archives. Berner skilfully employs these materi-
als to create vivid settings of nineteenth-century Europe and North America that are rich in
micro-level details and comprehensive general illustrations. In Strange Blood, Berner expertly
demonstrates her ability to collect, interpret, analyse, and articulate primary historical mate-
rials, seamlessly integrating them into her narrative. Reading the book feels like embarking
on a wonderful journey that involves conversing with various historical characters. Thanks to
Berner’s excellent work in interpreting and organising the raw historical materials, the con-
versation always feels swift and direct. The addition of over thirty images undoubtedly brings
readers closer to the characters and settings in late nineteenth-century Western contexts.
   However, Berner’s inquiry into transgressing not only scientific and medical boundaries
but also cultural, social, and human/non-human boundaries, using the cases of lamb blood
transfusion, is not entirely successful. To a large extent, Berner’s overemphasis on presenting
historical details diverts her attention from conducting in-depth analysis. While blood trans-
fusion and transgression in human societies are not new topics and have been investigated
by many scholars from various fields (e.g., Singelenberg 1990; Drawmer 2006), Berner rarely
engages with the ongoing conversation in the broader scholarship (except for a few scholars,
such as Anita Guerrini). This is a missed opportunity, given the wealth of historical materials
that Berner has deliberately included in the book. Strange Blood could have contributed more
significantly to academia than merely providing empirical materials for the theory-building
work of STS if Berner had incorporated more social and cultural reflections into the book.
   Another minor weakness of Strange Blood that I would like to address may seem irrelevant or
harsh to some Western readers. However, as someone from Asia who is engaged in decolonising
knowledge production, I find the book to be Eurocentric to some extent. For instance, in a
book written in English, other European languages like French, German, Italian and Swedish
are employed without proper translation. Furthermore, while Berner claims that lamb blood
transfusion in the nineteenth century is part of a broader international story, the international-
ity in the book is limited to trajectories of people, ideas, and objects within the West. The book
lacks a broader comparative perspective with countries outside Europe or North America, and
it does not investigate how the notion of transgression in medical development is perceived,
spread, and negotiated in wider non-Western societies. While I acknowledge that every scholar
is positioned and brings an inevitable partial view on the subject-matter, in this case the author’s
indifference to justifying the choice of the field of investigation and the possible limits of that
choice may suggest a Eurocentric perspective on the concept of internationality. This makes
the book somewhat methodologically and theoretically outdated in an era when many scholars
in the history of medicine (e.g., Kim 2014; Lin 2022) are exploring alternative and comparative
methods of writing transcultural world histories. In reviewing this book, I hope to encourage
the development of a more decolonised and transcultural framework that facilitates the explo-
ration of plural, shifting, locally informed global trajectories of science and technology.
Yang                                                                                                200

   Overall, Strange Blood is a well-written and easy-to-read book. Its readability does not de-
tract from its credibility as a serious academic work full of carefully examined and well-artic-
ulated historical analysis. I recommend it to anyone interested in problematising and recon-
structing the established boundaries of scientific knowledge and any discipline in culture and
humanity. I also recommend reading it alongside other relevant works cited in this review.


References

Drawmer, Lois (2006) Sex, Death, and Ecstacy: The Art of Transgression, in Peter Day (ed.), Vampires:
   Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, Leiden, Brill, pp. 39-56.
Foucault, Michel (1980) The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction, London, Allen Lane.
Kim, Hoi-Eun (2014) Doctors of Empire: Medical and Cultural Encounters between Imperial Germany
   and Meiji Japan, Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
Lederer, Susan (2000) Flesh and Blood: Organ Transplantation and Blood Transfusion in Twenti-
   eth-Century America, New York, Oxford University Press.
Lin, Yi-Tang (2022) Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Tai-
   wan, and the World, 1917-1960 (Global Health Histories), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Singelenberg, Richard (1990) The Blood Transfusion Taboo of Jehovah’s Witnesses: Origin, Development
   and Function of a Controversial Doctrine, in “Social Science & Medicine”, 31(4), pp. 515-523.
