DR. Shakman respondeu ao email sobre a tese de Doutorado em Portugal
Dear friends.
Thank you for this information. Someone (please forgive me for not recalling who; it may well have been Senor Fornaro or Fetha) had previously sent info on a French thesis from 1925 on autohemotherapy for cancer, which is now posted at:
www.instituteofscience.com/QuelquesCasDeCancer.pdf
The Medline Index (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed) now goes back to 1949, so perhaps at some point it may go back earlier. As I have not reviewed the listings (97 articles, plus 17 under autohaemotherapy), I'm not certain how comprehensive it is. However, in just scanning some of the earlier listings, it is noted that excellent articles by Poth 1949 and Reddick 1950 are already listed.
As I recall it was Spiethoff in 1913, a German rival of sorts with Ravaut as to priority of autohemotherapy, who among others had noted the evolution of autohemotherapy from the ancient practice of venesection, or bloodletting. In turn, this practice was already well established by the time of Hippocrates, but whose proven effectiveness was particularly integral vital to establishing the legacy of Galen as ruler of medicine for many centuries. Spiethoff in 1913 had worked with blood serum rather than whole blood; nor was he the first to do so, as Jez had reinjected blood serum subcutaneously as early as 1901.
Autohemotherapy per se had to wait for the invention of the hypodermic syringe, but the use of autogenous blood in therapy seemingly precedes the very beginning of recorded medicine. As discussed by autohemotherapy's pioneers, at least in part the reported success of venesection might be attributed to the absorption of blood into the tissues torn in the process, and the resulting action of this absorption. And the origin of venesection itself might well be attributed to observations that bleeding injuries were noted as and presumably associated with coincident "cures" of unrelated afflictions.
We are also reminded that current literature of so-called "autologous stem-cell transplantation" includes reference to stem-cells taken from the circulation, and even in some cases including the use of whole blood. Thus we may find through the history of medical practice instances of procedures involving the reinjection of whole blood or its components without specific reference to the FACT that this comprises or at least incorporates the essence of classical extravascular autohemotherapy.
With kind regards,
S. Hale Shakman, PhD
InstituteOfScience.com
