Murder most foul

It is not uncommon to accuse doctors of criminal negligence when their patients die. But in January 1668, when Antoine Mauroy, a mad man, was found dead in Paris, Dr Jean Denis was accused of his murder. His crime? He had transfused a calf’s blood into Mauroy’s body a few weeks before.

The medical and religious establishment in Paris was up in arms against Denis. They argued that his procedure was blasphemous because blood was the seat of the soul.

In June 1667 Denis had transfused blood from a lamb to a fifteen-year-old boy. It was successful and helped the boy live. The young physician wanted to experiment with transfusion and help people who needed blood. But the opposition was so strong that soon the French parliament banned blood transfusion. The ban was in place for almost 150 years effectively preventing any experiments involving blood transfusion.

When it was revived in England in 1818, human-to-human blood transfusion was attempted. Success was patchy because no one knew about blood groups then. It took several decades for scientists to discover different blood groups and figure out which ones matched and which ones did not.

Now hundreds of thousands of blood transfusions are done every day globally. It is such a common life-saving procedure that it is difficult to imagine that it was once treated as a sin against man and God.

What is the connection between persuasion and the early attempts at blood transfusion? There are three important lessons in the story for us.

First, it is virtually impossible to persuade people to accept or even try anything that is perceived as going against their strongly held beliefs, especially social and religious ones. According to Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, even great scientists have difficulty accommodating evidence that goes against their paradigms or deeply entrenched scientific beliefs. 

Second, in spite of such rock-solid resistance, the situation is not hopeless. But change requires time, patience, and systems. If you go in for a big bang that challenges strong beliefs, you are likely to fail. It may be wise to take one small virtually imperceptible step at a time.  After several small changes have been accepted or at least tolerated, you may find that gradually a big change has taken place. It’s like a bud that opens up in a few hours although you never see it opening.

Third, any ‘evidence’ that is in line with your beliefs is nearly always accepted uncritically. Here I should share with you a fact I’ve held back so far. Mad Mauroy was indeed murdered, but not by Denis. It was found out later that Denis’s opponents were the murderers. But the medical establishment and the public in Paris had no difficulty accepting their claim that blood transfusion led to the death. That Denis was an upstart with a humble origin also may have made it easy for the public to rubbish him.

Are you familiar with any instances where beliefs at home or at work place frustrate what you consider to be reasonable attempts at persuasion? Do share them with us.

Note: The historical facts about blood transfusion are taken from ‘Bloody victory, the evolution of a science,’ The Economist, March 19, 2011. It is a review of Holly Tucker’s book, Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution (W.W. Norton). If you can’t get hold of the book, read at least the review.