Blood Group Research in Great Britain, France, and the U.S. Between the World Wars

Despite uneven beginnings, scientists in Great Britain, France, and the U.S. eventually developed strong interests in the new field of blood group research. Although initially the publication record was greatly exceeded by that of work in Germany and the Soviet Union, by the late 1930s researchers in each of the three countries developed a strong interest in the field while in Germany and the Soviet Union there was a precipitous decline. In fact, British, French, and American researchers laid the groundwork for the revival in worldwide research on blood groups in the years following the Second World War. Two important points for comparison about research on blood groups by British, French, and American researchers were the influence of individual scientists and the extent of studies in distant overseas locales. One or two scientists established a center that trained and directed a new generation of researchers in France and Britain, but there was so much interest in the U.S. that several centers developed. All three countries extended the geographical range of populations tested for blood type. France and Britain did this mainly in their colonial empires, but American researchers did their studies in an “informal” health empire, created by research expeditions, Rockefeller projects (in Nigeria, Lebanon, and China), medical missionaries, and old-fashioned Yankee gunboat diplomacy that placed American medical researchers in positions around the world that offered many subjects for research.