In 1668, the famous French physician Claude Perrault intervened in his "Essais de physique" on the highly debated issue of blood transfusion. According to Perrault, it was impossible that an animal could receive blood that was not its own, that it had not itself undergone the process of concoction within the body. Transfusion, in Perrault's words, was a dangerous remedy; the new blood, poured violently into the veins of the receiving patient, caused a furious and immoderate movement which, in turn, induced violent, dangerous and even deadly passions in the receiver, through the animal spirits. If even some transfusion ended without harm to the patient, this was due to an accident: the small amount of the exchanged blood, due to the technical difficulties of the operation. With his great authority in medical matters, Perrault contributed to what was one of the most daring and innovative scientific research programs of the seventeenth century: the first experiments on blood transfusion. In Perrault's words, a whole series of hurdles and difficulties matured which affected this program from the beginning, and which eventually led to its eclipse: the technical difficulty of carrying out a transfusion; the effects of blood on the psyche and on the soul; and, above all, the idea that it was possible to exchange the blood between different species, thus realizing a monstrous fusion between different beings (human and animal) that God wanted to be clearly separated.
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