The Institute for Blood Transfusion
Bogdanov's Moscow institute, founded to prove that exchanging blood could reverse aging
Background
Established in Moscow in 1926, the world's first institute dedicated to blood transfusion was the instrument of one man's utopia. Alexander Bogdanov believed that mutual, repeated transfusions could rejuvenate the aging body and biologically bind individuals into a collective, a science he called 'physiological collectivism', and which he had imagined two decades earlier in his Martian novel 'Red Star'.
Bogdanov made himself the chief experimental subject, reporting that he felt rejuvenated after eleven exchanges. Volunteers included Lenin's sister, Maria Ulyanova. The institute did real, lasting work in transfusion medicine even as its founder pursued his stranger goal.
On his twelfth exchange, in April 1928, Bogdanov took the blood of a student who had an inactive form of tuberculosis and gave the student his own. Bogdanov died of a haemolytic transfusion reaction. What became of the student is not documented in any source in this archive. The institute was renamed in his honour.