death_date birth_place birth_date image article_title name alma_mater
14 april 1940 budapest , hungary 1 september 1874 bernard m. fantus.jpg bernard fantus
 bernard fantus university of illinois
bernard fantus

bernard fantus -lrb- september 1 , 1874 - april 14 , 1940 -rrb- was a hungarian american physician .
he established the first hospital blood bank in the united states in 1937 at cook county hospital , chicago while he served there as director of the pharmacology and therapeutics department .
fantus was born in budapest , hungary -lrb- then part of the austro-hungarian empire -rrb- .
he gained his md degree in 1899 from the university of illinois .
from 1934 , he was the director of therapeutics at cook county hospital .
the science and practice of blood transfusions was developing internationally at the time .
small-scale refrigerated storage of whole blood had been used first in world war i -lrb- see oswald hope robertson -rrb- and this had been developed in russia into a larger-scale system of blood depots .
in the us , hospitals such as the mayo clinic certainly used refrigerated storage of blood from 1935 .
fantus conducted further experiments in blood storage , culminating in the preservation of blood for up to ten days , and he prepared to establish a `` blood preservation laboratory '' at the hospital .
crucially , however , he changed its name before launch to `` cook county hospital blood bank '' .
it opened in march 1937 .
fantus invented the name `` blood bank '' and put this name into circulation , partly through a landmark article .
in the journal of the american medical association in july 1937 .
it was rapidly adopted by other hospitals .
in may 1933 , fantus joined with others to establish the humanist movement with the publication of the first humanist manifesto .
