Former WWII medic collects all things blood

Ever since his days tending wounded soldiers as a World War II Army medic, Paul Schmidt has been fascinated with blood - giving it, getting it and letting it.

"I guess I have blood in my blood," the retired Tampa pathologist likes to say.

That's a little blood bank humor from the former longtime president of Southwest Florida Blood Bank, now part of Florida Blood Services.

What's a passion for plasma without a hobby to express it? Schmidt collects antique bloodletting bowls and tools of the trade - and the stories that go with them.

Part of the collection he and his wife, Louise, gathered from around the world is displayed in two curio cabinets in the lobby of Florida Blood Services at 10100 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N.

Schmidt, the 84-year-old historian for the American Association of Blood Banks, plans to showcase everything in a virtual museum that unfolds the story and art of bloodletting. Described in Chinese medicine around the 4th century, the procedure led to the modern blood transfusions of our time.

The idea for an online museum has been in the works for about four years; organizers are focused on fundraising and documenting Schmidt's collection.

"He has about 70 bowls and all kinds of instruments, leech jars and medieval-looking stuff," said Florida Blood Services spokesman Brent Swager, who photographed most of the pieces.

Bloodletting was practiced among ancient civilizations, including the Greeks. Among the first physicians to embrace the custom was a man named Galen, a student of Hippocrates who believed draining the blood helped rid the body of "bad humours" - the suspected causes of diseases and conditions such as hypertension.

During the 12th century, barber-surgeons pulled teeth, provided close shaves and drained blood. They used bowls known as bloodletting cups, which had a niche on one side to rest under the chin or an outstretched arm.

In the story of Don Quixote, the rogue warrior steals a barber's bowl because he believes it's a helmet with magical powers. An image of Quixote sitting high on his horse, bowl on head, is featured today on Don Q rum bottles.

Schmidt began studying the history of bloodletting after he left the Army. He spent 20 years at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, becoming chief of transfusion medicine before moving to Florida. All the while, he mined the history of blood nightly and on weekends in the medical library where his wife worked.

Married 56 years, the couple have three children and three grandchildren.

Assembled piece by piece

Schmidt got some of his pieces as hand-me-downs from other collectors, others from the couple's travels through foreign lands. Sometimes he stumbled upon perfectly good bloodletting paraphernalia at flea markets.

His collection features several tools, including a scarificator, a spring-cocked instrument with gears that can pop 12 to 15 blades into the skin. He has cupping devices - glass bulbs that, when heated and cupped on the skin, create a vacuum resulting in a welt. The barber sliced off the top of the welt and drained it. That's still practiced today in Eastern Europe, Schmidt said.

Although bloodletting has persisted for thousands of years, it was dangerous. President George Washington died in 1799 from blood loss after he requested a letting following a nasty throat infection.

Some of the first blood transfusions took place in the 1600s between animals and, later, between animals and humans. One of the first known transfusions between humans happened in Philadelphia in 1795. Nearly 100 years later, it became possible to select donors by blood type. Even with such progress, donors had to be near patients for transfusions well into the 1900s, Schmidt said.

It was World War II that changed the way we deal with blood. Schmidt's collection features a 1942 German transfusion pump for "direct soldier-to-soldier transfusions."

Technology among the Allies evolved more rapidly, allowing for collecting the precious red liquid in advance for shipment to the battlefield. Dried plasma, which could be stored in vacuum-packed glass bottles, was mixed with sterile water and used to replace whole blood, which would deteriorate within a few days of storage.

This was a remarkable discovery, made in 1939 by physician Charles R. Drew, a medical director in New York who created the model for the Red Cross, which collected 14 million pints of blood from 1942 to 1945.

"Blood saved soldiers' lives," Schmidt said. "After World War II, every city wanted its own blood bank."

A call to arms

Tampa beat most to the punch, opening one of the world's first blood banks in 1942, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Mrs. Frank D. Jackson (Grace to her friends) is credited with raising money and interest for the blood bank.

She went on a local radio show produced by Tampa Electric Co. called "Women at War" and made her plea for residents to support the cause.

"With modern equipment, the care and safe storage of prepared blood make arm-to-arm transfusions unnecessary," Jackson told listeners. "... countless hundreds of lives have and will be saved by blood transfusions."

The Tampa Blood Bank became the Southwest Florida Blood Bank, which merged in 1994 with the Community Blood Bank of St. Petersburg (founded in 1952) and the Hunter Blood Center of Clearwater (founded in 1949) to form Florida Blood Services.

Today, we continue making advances in blood transfusions, collections and donations, conquering recent threats to our blood supply such as syphilis, malaria, hepatitis and AIDS.

"Blood transfusions have become routine," said Schmidt, who, even in retirement, rallies for the cause. "It is never to be taken for granted and depends entirely on the voluntary donor.

"If you know how things got started you can do a better job changing things."