Frederic Duran Jorda and the Barcelona blood transfusion service (1936-1939)

From July 1936 a Barcelona haematologist collected blood from civilian donors, preserved it with citrate under refrigeration and sent it to fronts 200 kilometres away, drawing 4,000 litres from eleven thousand extractions in eighteen months. It was the first stored-blood service to supply a war, and it reached Prague and London in the luggage of its exiles rather than through the journals: the international congress of 1937 was still giving priority to arm-to-arm transfusion while it ran.