A Visit to the "Blood Bank" at the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital with the Ladies of the Lebanese Red Cross

In the distant past, certain death was the fate of anyone who suffered the loss of a great quantity of his blood as the result of a grave wound or a violent accident. Then medicine discovered the possibility of saving the bleeding man from death by supplying him with living blood, carried into his vein from the vein of a healthy person; and this discovery scored a great victory in the humanitarian, vital, and health fields, and from it sprang a special science whose serious results and benefits have shown themselves clearly, above all in mass calamities such as wars and natural disasters.

Scientists persevered in their researches and studies, and before long important truths and secrets were revealed to them — among them the possibility of preserving blood outside the human body without its losing its living natural properties, and of storing it up in varying quantities just as money is stored up in banks. Thus its usefulness spread wide at the time of "transfusion operations," and blood came to be kept in laboratories, each one of which was called a "blood bank." From that day on, human blood has had its material value, bought and sold like drugs and milk...

But the wars and the national and natural catastrophes that mow down hundreds and thousands of innocents alerted humanitarian and medical institutions in every part of the world to the importance of storing blood after collecting it through appeals for free volunteering, to which people of charity and great merciful hearts respond. Foremost among such institutions known to us are the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies of the world.

The Lebanese Red Cross, for all its limited means, has a distinguished record of activity in this field. It has had the honor of contributing effectively to the saving of hundreds of lives — first during the Palestine war, then during the natural disasters that struck Lebanon one after another these past three years... These experiences served as a school, from which the members of the Red Cross set out into deeper humanitarian experience and more fruitful giving. And now, at last, in these bloody disturbances that Lebanon is suffering today, the importance of the "blood bank" and the noble humanitarian services it renders on the purely human plane have come to the fore. We therefore thought it useful to speak here to our readers about this absorbing subject.

Because the humanitarian mission of the Red Cross embraces all, its units are welcomed in Lebanon today by all groups and communities, whatever their political leanings and tendencies. Every barrier collapses at once before the siren of the rescue car — a car white as the dove of peace, which pushes into all areas, open and forbidden alike, to provide the necessary first aid and answer the call of the needy — every needy person — whether near at hand in the city or far off on the mountain heights or in the farthest reaches of the North or the South.

I congratulated the members of the Lebanese Red Cross on the orderly plan they are following these days under the direction of its president the Marquise de Freige and the vice-president Mrs. Fayza al-Solh, and on the energy of the board of directors, among whose members are the ladies: Alexandra Issa el-Khoury, Laure Tabet, Najla Saab, Rose Kettaneh, Sumayya al-Khazen, Afifi Majdalani, Heneni Tarcha, Ellen Rihan, Marcelle Hochar, Eva Serhal, Renée Arman, and others.

These ladies have taken it upon themselves, in these critical circumstances, to meet every morning, to follow up, pursue, and carry out the emergency decisions the circumstances require.

Mrs. Alexandra Issa el-Khoury affirmed that the idea of establishing a "blood bank" belonging to the Lebanese Red Cross itself had long haunted minds and thoughts, and that nothing stood in the way of carrying it out except the lack of funds. "And so we decided at first to receive blood donors at the Health Center; then we moved to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, where our apparatus is now at work collecting blood from donors and keeping it in the refrigerators, to be sent out with all speed to whoever calls on us for help."

In the Hôtel-Dieu laboratory you are received by Mrs. Eva Serhal, in charge of blood transfusion for the Red Cross, and you cannot fail to notice the quiet cheerfulness with which she welcomes the volunteers, men and women alike; she records their names, their addresses, and their telephone numbers, and then they pass into the laboratory, where drops of blood are taken from their fingertips so that, after testing, the group to which each one's blood belongs may be determined.

Mrs. Marcelle Hochar reminded me of the familiar saying: "My blood just doesn't take to his!" — affirming that this naive, primitive expression has today acquired a clear scientific meaning: human blood belongs originally to four groups, A, B, AB, and O — and the last group alone can be merged completely with the other three, which cannot be merged with one another... That is why group O is the most in demand. Its owners soon have their pressure measured, and if it proves normal they are stretched out in turn on a table, and the specialist transfers 200 to 400 c.c. of their blood into a special bottle, which is sent at once to the refrigerator and kept until it is needed.

As for those of blood groups A, B, and AB, they are set free — on condition that they remain on call, to be summoned individually when the need arises; and they answer the call at once, with an eagerness that draws tears of emotion.

Mrs. Serhal affirms that the need for blood is assured; and although the Red Cross has made no publicity beyond announcements in the newspapers, it constantly receives lines of blood volunteers at the rate of 12 to 15 a day. The number of those who have given of their blood, from the opening of donations on May 28 last up to June 20, has reached 128 persons. And what gratifies our national pride is that the women are no fewer in number than the men.

My visit to the Red Cross "blood bank" happened to fall just after a bomb exploded in the vegetable market, from which several innocent wounded fell, writhing on their beds as they waited for someone to save them with his blood...

I stood in line, waiting my turn and watching, while the blood transfusions

went forward swiftly and in good order...
I saw schoolgirls pleading with the nurse to accept their blood to save the victims, and the nurse insisting on refusal because the girls were under eighteen years of age...

And I saw a man carrying an "X-ray" picture of his heart, which had been damaged a year before, to convince the doctor that it is now strong and worthy of the grace of giving!

And I saw a flock of nuns — Sisters of Mercy — over whom hovered an all-embracing love and a spiritual exaltation; and I saw one of them with my own eyes give of her blood the greatest quantity allowed — 400 c.c. — and I glimpsed her lashes closing over a spiritual serenity that defied the pale tremor on her heavenly face...

And the tears welled from my eyes in spite of me — tears of deep emotion and of joy! For I felt with certainty that there are hearts still filled with pure human giving. These hearts pour out their blood gladly to save some wounded man from death — even if that wounded man should be an enemy!.. Is that not proclaimed by the sealed certificate the Red Cross sends to every donor of blood?:

"An unknown person owes you his life." It does not matter, then, "who" the wounded man saved from death may be; what matters most is the "saving" itself. Blessed be the mercy in the heart of man — it is a breath of the spirit of God!..