Bernard Fantus

Bernard Fantus (September 1, 1874 -April 14, 1940) was a Hungarian American physician. He established the first hospital blood bank in the United States in 1937 at Cook County Hospital, Chicago while he served there as director of the pharmacology and therapeutics department.

Fantus was born in Budapest, Hungary (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire ). He gained his MD degree in 1899 from the University of Illinois. From 1934, he was the director of therapeutics at Cook County Hospital. The science and practice of blood transfusions was developing internationally at the time. Small-scale refrigerated storage of whole blood had been used first in World War I (see Oswald Hope Robertson) and this had been developed in Russia into a larger-scale system of blood depots. In the US, hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic certainly used refrigerated storage of blood from 1935. Fantus conducted further experiments in blood storage, culminating in the preservation of blood for up to ten days, and he prepared to establish a “Blood Preservation Laboratory” at the hospital. Crucially, however, he changed its name before launch to “Cook County Hospital Blood Bank”. It opened in March 1937.

Fantus invented the name “blood bank” and put this name into circulation, partly through a landmark article. in the Journal of the American Medical Association in July 1937. It was rapidly adopted by other hospitals.

Commemoration

 * His grave is in Forest Park cemetery, Illinois.
 * Fantus Health Center, Cook County
 * Bernard Fantus Lifetime Achievement Award, given by the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) to an individual who has made numerous outstanding contributions to the scientific basis and/or clinical practice of blood banking and transfusion medicine during the preceding fifty years. It is a distinguished award that is only made at intervals of five years or more.