Development of sugery between 1832 1918
... The profession and historians at the time referred to this period between ------ and ----- as the ‘Black Period of Surgery’. ... By the first world, 1914 to 1918 the public gave blood freely, which was necessary during wartime and seen as a patriotic duty. With large numbers of soldiers wounded the development of the anti-clotting agent sodium citrate paved the way forward for large scale blood transfusions and the setting up of Blood Banks ran by the British Red Cross; which without this would have resulted in many thousands of soldiers dying.