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Meanwhile Wren’s work had become known in other countries, and it is said that transfusion was performed in 1664 by Daniel of Leipsic, who thus anticipated the work of Lower. However this may be, the first transfusion done upon a human being was certainly carried out in France by Jean Denys of Montpellier, physician to Louis XIV. This is admitted in the Philosophical Transactions, but the following statement in extenuation of English hesitancy is made:

“We readily grant, They were the first, we know off, that actually thus improved the Experiment; but then they must give us leave to inform them of this Truth, that the Philosophers in England had practised it long agoe upon Man, if they had not been so tender in hazarding the Life of Man (which they take so much pains for to preserve and relieve), nor so scrupulous to incurre the Penalties of the Law, which in England, is more strict and nice in case of this concernment, than those of many other Nations are.”

Dr. Edmund King further asserts that “We have been ready for this Experiment these six Months,” that is to say, since March, 1667. Moral precedence must, however, give way to the actual, and it is clear that Denys had snatched the laurels. A translation of a full and interesting account of his earlier experiment upon animals and his first two transfusions done upon men was published in the Philosophical Transactions for July 22, 1667. Of the first of these he wrote as follows: