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Who Karl Landsteiner is? More...
How Blood Groups were categorised. More...
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Blood Groups - Karl
Landsteiner
In 1901, over a century ago, Karl Landsteiner of Vienna
(1868 - 1943) published has discovery of what we now know
as the ABO blood group system. He had realised that there
were differences between the blood of individuals following
experiments performed using samples from his colleagues at
the Institute of Pathology in Vienna. He mixed their red cells
and serum and observed that some mixtures would result in
clumping of the cells whilst in others the red cells remained
separate. Landsteiner initially called the three blood groups
A, B, and C. These eventually became known as A, B, and O.
The rarer group AB was not discovered until the following
year by two of Landsteiner's pupils.
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Lansteiner's work opened the door to safer
transfusion but it was some years after his discovery that
blood grouping was routinely adopted. Although the ABO system
was the first blood group system to be discovered, it still
remains the most important. It is vitally important that we
ensure patients are given blood of the correct ABO group.
Karl Landsteiner emigrated to New York in 1922, and discovered
the Rhesus blood factor whilst working at the Rockefeller
Institute for Medical Research. He was awarded the Nobel Prize
for Medicine in 1930 for his work on blood groups. |
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Karl Landsteiner was born in Vienna on June
14, 1868. His father, Leopold Landsteiner, a doctor of law,
was a well-known journalist and newspaper publisher, who died
when Karl was six years old. Karl was brought up by his mother,
Fanny Hess, to whom he was so devoted that a death mask of
her hung on his wall until he died. After leaving school,
Landsteiner studied medicine at the Univerisity
of Vienna, graduating in 1891.
Even while he was a student he had begun to do biochemical
research end in 1891 he published a paper on the influence
of diet on the composition of blood ash. To gain further knowledge
of chemistry he spent the next five years in the laboratories
of Hantzsch at Zurich, Emil Fischer at Wurzburg, and E. Bamberger
at Munich. |
Returning to Vienna, Landsteiner resumed his medical studies at
the Vienna General Hospital. In 1896 he became an assistant under
Max von Gruber in the Hygiene Institute at Vienna. Even at this
time he was interested in the mechanisms of immunity and in the
nature of antibodies. From 1898 till 1908 he held the post of assistant
in the University Department of Pathological Anatomy in Vienna,
the Head of which was Professor A. Weichselbaum, who had discovered
the bacterial cause of meningitis, and with Fraenckel had discovered
the pneumococcus.
Here Landsteiner worked on morbid physiology rather than on morbid
anatomy. In this he was encouraged by Weichselbaum, in spite of
the criticism of others in this Institute. In 1908 Weichselbaum
secured his appointment as Prosector in the Wilhelminaspital in
Vienna, where he remained until 1919. In 1911 he became Professor
of Pathological Anatomy in the University of Vienna, but without
the corresponding salary.
Up to the year 1919, after twenty years of
work on pathological anatomy, Landsteiner with a number of
collaborators had published many papers on his findings in
morbid anatomy and on immunology. He discovered new facts
about the immunology of syphilis, added to the knowledge of
the Wassermann reaction, and discovered the immunological
factors which he named haptens (it then became clear that
the active substances in the extracts of normal organs used
in this reaction were, in fact, haptens). He made fundamental
contributions to our knowledge of paroxysmal haemoglobinuria.
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He also showed that the cause of poliomyelitis could be transmitted
to monkeys by injecting into them material prepared by grinding
up the spinal cords of children who had died from this disease,
and, lacking in Vienna monkeys for further experiments, he went
to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where monkeys were available.
His work there, together with that independently done by Flexner
and Lewis, laid the foundations of our knowledge of the cause and
immunology of poliomyelitis.
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Landsteiner made numerous contributions to
both pathological anatomy, histology and immunology, all of
which showed, not only his meticulous care in observation
and description, but also his biological understanding.
But his name will no doubt always be honoured for his discovery
in 1901 of, and outstanding work on, the blood groups, for
which he was given the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
in 1930. |
In 1875 Landois had reported that, when man is given transfusions
of the blood of other animals, these foreign blood corpuscles are
clumped and broken up in the blood vessels of man with the liberation
of haemoglobin. In 1901-1903 Landsteiner pointed out that a similar
reaction may occur when the blood of one human individual is transfused,
not with the blood of another animal, but with that of another human
being, and that this might be the cause of shock, jaundice, and
haemoglobinuria that had followed some earlier attempts at blood
transfusions.
His suggestions, however, received little attention until, in 1909,
he classified the bloods of human beings into the now well-known
A, B, AB, and O groups and showed that transfusions between individuals
of groups A or B do not result in the destruction of new blood cells
and that this catastrophe occurs only when a person is transfused
with the blood of a person belonging to a different group. Earlier,
in 1901-1903, Landsteiner had suggested that, because the characteristics
which determine the blood groups are inherited, the blood groups
may be used to decide instances of doubtful paternity.
Much of the subsequent work that Landsteiner and his pupils did
on blood groups and the immunological uses they made of them was
done, not in Vienna, but in New York. For in 1919 conditions in
Vienna were such that laboratory work was very difficult and, seeing
no future for Austria, Landsteiner obtained the appointment of Prosector
to a small Roman Catholic Hospital at The Hague. Here he published,
from 1919-1922, twelve papers on new haptens that he had discovered,
on conjugates with proteins which were capable of inducing anaphylaxis
and on related problems, and also on the serological specificity
of the haemoglobins of different species of animals.
His work in Holland came to an end when he was offered a post in
the Rockefeller
Institute for Medical Research in New York and he moved there
together with his family. It was here that he did, in collaboration
with Levine and Wiener, the further work on the blood groups which
greatly extended the number of these groups, and here in collaboration
with Wiener studied bleeding in the new-born, leading to the discovery
of the Rh-factor in blood, which relates the human blood to the
blood of the rhesus monkey.
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To the end of his life, Landsteiner
continued to investigate blood groups and the chemistry of
antigens, antibodies and other immunological factors that
occur in the blood. It was one of his great merits that he
introduced chemistry into the service of serology.
Rigorously exacting in the demands he made upon
himself, Landsteiner possessed untiring energy. Throughout
his life he was always making observations in many fields
other than those in which his main work was done (he was,
for instance, responsible for having introduced dark-field
illumination in the study of spirochaetes). By nature somewhat
pessimistic, he preferred to live away from people. |
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| Landsteiner married Helen Wlasto in 1916.
Dr. E. Landsteiner is a son by this marriage. In 1939 he became
Emeritus Professor at the Rockefeller Institute, but continued
to work as energetically as before, keeping eagerly in touch
with the progress of science. It is characteristic of him
that he died pipette in hand. OnJune 24, 1943, he had a heart
attack in his laboratory and died two days later in the hospital
of the Institute in which he had done such distinguished work.
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National Blood Service
Call our help line on 08457 711 711
at anytime or visit the website
www.blood.co.uk
Regional Transfusion Centre
The John Radcliffe
Headington
Oxford OX3 9DU
Tel +44(0)1865 741188
Don't forget to give blood regularly, and inform the National
Blood Service any change of address - you can do it online.
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