Transfusion and blood donation on the screen

Abstract

BACKGROUND: In the 20th century, blood transfusion has become an indispensable therapy in carrying out and improving many medical and surgical applications. Its scope of influence goes well beyond that of medicine, because blood donation, an action with high social significance, is completely connected to progress in the field. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: The purpose of this research was to study, through films that show transfusion or blood donation, the impression that has been given to the public in the course of the 20th century and its sociologic impact. To accomplish this, we have used various sources from Histories of Cinema and from the Internet to identify films from different countries and from different epochs that touch on this theme. RESULTS: With these two components, the act of donation and the act of transfusion, the relatively short history of blood transfusion is distinguished by upheavals in both the medical and the sociopolitical fields of the past century. Movies, the most commonly shared cultural event and mirror of society, have simultaneously gone through their first century by showing the diversity of our feelings and the human condition. CONCLUSION: Through various cinematographic references, the authors offer an analysis of the use, by the Seventh Art, of values and illustrations that use blood donation and transfusion.

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