Hi!! I work in a blood bank (an animal blood bank, but the concepts are the same), so when Van Helsing started talking about transfusions I instantly perked up. I thought some people might be interested in a few things that were working through my mind as I navigated chapters 10-12.

Dracula was published in 1897, so to put that in perspective: 1818: the first successful transfusion of human blood to a human 1870s: an experimental era where physicians attempt to use milk as an alternative, to cut back on the risk of adverse transfusion reactions. They tried cow, goat, and human milk at various points and they all worked about as well as you’d expect given that we don’t do it anymore. 1884: they start using saline instead of milk, which works a lot better 1901: Karl Landsteiner discovers blood types 1907: Cross-matching is introduced

So, naturally, seeing how transfusion itself was portrayed in a book published in the late 1890s was fascinating to me because so much has changed in our understanding. A few people in the forums have already pointed out the medical sexism in this scene (Van Helsing refusing to use a woman as a donor, believing them too weak to handle the loss of blood), but there were also some medical practices that set off alarm bells for me.

The general public now knows that cross-matching determines whether a recipient is compatible with a unit of blood. What you may not realize however is because of the way antigens work, once you receive one donation then your potential for reaction increases with each subsequent donation. This makes cross-matching mandatory, and it also makes finding a match increasingly unlikely. So, when Lucy then received several donations from several different donors my immediate thought was “Oh no!!” But then again...most blood recipients don’t have a vampire coming in and drinking all that nice, fresh donated blood the night after they receive it. So in a way, this plot still works even with this medical inaccuracy, which is something that makes my brain very happy.

Anyway, I thought people might be interested in some context of this scene. I love talking about transfusion medicine.