Jan Janský
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Jan Janský (Czech pronunciation: [ˈjan ˈjanskiː]; 3 April 1873 in Smíchov, now Prague – 8 September 1921 in Černošice, near Prague) was a Czech serologist, neurologist and psychiatrist. He is credited with the classification of blood into four types (I, II, III, IV).[1]
Janský studied
ischaemic heart disease
.
Janský was also a proponent of voluntary blood donations.
Classification
Through his psychiatric research, Janský tried to find a correlation between mental diseases and
blood diseases. He found no such correlation existed and published a study, Hematologická studie u psychotiků (1907, Hematological study of psychotics), in which he classified blood into four groups, I, II, III, and IV. (At the time, Janský was unaware of the work of Karl Landsteiner, whose discovery of the A, B, and O blood types earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930.) At the time Janský's discovery passed almost unnoticed. In 1921 an American medical commission acknowledged Janský's classification. A similar classification was described by William Lorenzo Moss, except the I and IV of Moss were the opposite to that of Janský's, leading to confusion in blood transfusion
until the use of A, B and O became standard.
Legacy
- Frequent voluntary blood donors in the Czech Republic and Slovakia are awarded with Janský medal (Janského plaketa).
- The Secret of Blood, a 1953 Czechoslovak film about his discovery.
References
- ISBN 978-0-19-101558-8.
External links
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