Reginald Saxton: An unlikely pioneer of battleground blood transfusion

Abstract

The development of blood transfusion services during the Spanish Civil War represented an intermediate step between the practices in the First World War (WW1, 1914-1918 and the more highly organised arrangements established in anticipation of the Second World War (WW2, 1939(WW2, -1945. 1 At the start of WW1, in Britain, blood transfusion in civilian clinical practice was an uncommon event and the resuscitation policies of the Royal Army Medical Corps emphasised the use of saline and colloid. With the arrival of Canadian, and later American, Army Medical Officers working at Casualty Clearing Stations and also closer to the Front, this policy was supplemented or replaced at first mainly with direct arm to arm whole blood transfusion, and later with the wider adoption of pre-donated citrated 'universal donor' whole blood. [2][3][4] By the end of the war, however, transfusions were being administered at advanced locations nearer the front. 5 There was no systematic policy