Blood Relations
Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics
Publication supported by the Bevington Fund
328 pages
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32 halftones
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6 x 9
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© 2020
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents

Contents
Prefatory Note
Introduction: Blood, Paper, and Genetics
1. Transfusion and Race in Interwar Europe
2. Reforming Human Heredity in the 1930s
3. Blood Groups at War
4. The Rhesus Controversy
5. Postwar Blood Grouping 1: The Blood Group Research Unit
6. Valuable Bodies and Rare Blood
7. Postwar Blood Grouping 2: Arthur Mourant’s National and International Networks
8. Organizing and Mapping Global Blood Groups
9. Blood Groups and the Reform of Race Science in the 1950s
10. Decoupling Transfusion and Genetics: Blood in the New Human Biology
Conclusion: Blood and Promise
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Glossary
Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Review Quotes
M. Susan Lindee, University of Pennsylvania
“Blood Relations is a brilliant and engaging study of the science and the politics of blood. Bangham tracks the story of the practices of blood collection and analysis in Britain after 1900 in ways that vividly illuminate race science, human genetics, nationalism, and war. In her empirically rich account, blood ties together donors, clerks, serologists, geneticists, and anthropologists. The beautifully curated archival images and charts call our attention to the many kinds of labor and laborer involved in modern science. The account of the rise of human genetics is persuasive and novel, situated at the intersections of the history of science, medicine, and modernity. An important and powerful book, Blood Relations is required reading for scholars in the field, but also warmly accessible to any general reader with an interest in the moving human story of how and why blood became a medical, social, and scientific resource.”
Daniel J. Kevles, professor emeritus of history, Yale University
"Bangham tells a stunningly original story: how the science of human blood groups evolved in Britain, from its uses in the transfusion services in World War II through its transformation by the 1960s into a powerful enabler of human population genetics. She exploits a rich trove of archival sources to detail the system of labeling, description, record-keeping, and analysis devised by the leaders of London's blood research centers: R. A. Fisher, Ruth Sanger, and Arthur Mourant. This is, in all, a great feast of a book."
Bruno J. Strasser, author of Collecting Experiments: Making Big Data Biology
"In this masterful study, Bangham sheds new light on the history of human genetics. Looking beyond eugenics, she shows how much human genetics owed to the development of blood transfusion in mid-twentieth century Britain. To tell her riveting story, she brings in a fascinating set of characters including donors, nurses, needle sharpeners, and clerks. Bangham argues convincingly that the state infrastructure put in place on the eve of World War II was essential in producing the collections of blood and data on which depended the rise of the new science."
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