In August 1906, Dr. George Crile was called to the bedside of a dying patient at St. Alexis Hospital. He decided to risk an experimental procedure: blood transfusion. The patient’s brother agreed to donate. After a search for sufficiently small needle and thread, Dr. Crile sewed the men’s wrists together to enable the transfusion. Though risky and largely unprecedented, it worked. Both brothers lived for decades to come, and Dr. Crile’s work helped make blood transfusion safe and routine.
I remember reading about this method in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I truly didn’t realize how modern blood transfusions were.