506 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1961 



work in this field that Landsteiner in 1900 discovered the human 

 blood groups. 



BLOOD GROUPS AND ANTHROPOLOGY 



While investigating possible reactions between the red corpuscles 

 of the blood, or red cells, of certain persons and the blood serum 

 of others, Landsteiner showed that the red cells of any given person 

 may carry either of two substances known as A and B, or they may 

 carry neither of them. Subsequent work showed that the red cells of 

 some persons carry both substances. These substances, because of 

 the reactions described below, and of other properties subsequently 

 elucidated, are classified biochemically as antigens. Their chemical 

 constitution is now fairly fully known but they could then be charac- 

 terized only by the use, as reagents, of certain hmnan sera containing 

 proteins known as antibodies, specifically related to the A and B 

 antigens and hence known as anti-A and anti-B. When a serum con- 

 taining anti-A is added to red cells carrying the A antigen, the latter 

 combines with the antibody and the red cells are thereby caused to 

 agglutinate, or stick together in clumps. Similarly anti-B causes 

 cells carrying the B antigen to agglutinate. 



From a time soon after their first discovery, the main practical im- 

 portance of the investigation of the blood groups has always lain in 

 ensuring the compatibility of blood transfusions, millions of which 

 are now given annually throughout the world. This has perforce led 

 to the blood groups being studied in great detail, and they have as a 

 result been shown to possess an interest and importance far tran- 

 scending their immediate practical application. 



It was clear from the beginning that the blood group of an indi- 

 vidual was a more or less permanent attribute of his bodily constitu- 

 tion; it must soon have become clear that it was something inborn 

 and in some sense inherited. The first suggestion that the blood 

 groups were determined by Mendelian genes seems to have been made 

 in 1908 by Epstein and Ottenberg, and in 1910 Von Dmigern and 

 Hirszfeld clearly showed that the possession of the A or B antigen 

 was a well-defined genetical character, though the precise mode of 

 inheritance was only determined by Bernstein in 1924, Meanwhile, in 

 1919, Professor and Mrs. Hirszfeld, who had been pioneers in many 

 other aspects of blood-group study, were the first to apply them to 

 anthropology. At the end of the First World War they were working 

 at Salonika, a great crossroads for the movement both of troops and 

 of refugees, and they were able to test the blood of large numbers of 

 persons from many lands and most of the continents. They were 

 thus able to show that, while most populations possessed all the four 

 blood groups, the proj)ortions in which they occurred differed widely 

 from one population to another. 



