First Blood Bank Opens: Chicago Saves Lives with Stored Blood

Dr. Bernard Fantus established the world's first hospital blood bank at Cook County Hospital in Chicago on March 15, 1937, creating a system where donated blood could be stored, typed, and cross-matched for transfusion on demand. Before Fantus's innovation, blood transfusions required finding a compatible donor at the moment of need, a process so unreliable that many patients bled to death while waiting. Fantus coined the term 'blood bank,' drawing an analogy to financial banking: donors made deposits, patients made withdrawals. He preserved blood using sodium citrate as an anticoagulant and refrigerated it at 4 degrees Celsius, extending its usable life to roughly ten days. The system was immediately adopted by hospitals across the United States and proved its value during World War II, when battlefield blood banks saved thousands of soldiers who would have died from hemorrhagic shock. The Red Cross launched its national blood collection program in 1948 based on Fantus's model.