How Spanish Civil War blood reached Prague
Brasó Broggi and Bortlová-Vondráková show that Holubec carried Duran Jordà's stored-blood method from Republican Spain to Czechoslovakia, where it persisted into the 1950s before Soviet isolation overlaid it.
Source
Internationalist blood: Karel Holubec and the diffusion of Duran Jordà's method of blood transfusion to Czechoslovakia, 1930s-50s
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How Spanish Civil War blood reached Prague
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Karel Holubec entered Spain in May 1937.
The Czechoslovak Dr Karel Holubec entered Spain in May 1937 and practiced in a mobile hospital funded by the Czechoslovak Committee to Aid Democratic Spain, receiving blood from Duran’s laboratory
What did Duran develop?
In the first months of the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish doctor Frederic Duran Jordà developed a new method of blood transfusion which overcame the era of
What they did
A transnational history using interpersonal contact, conferences, performances and multilingual publications to follow Duran's Barcelona/Aragon method via Holubec's 1937 mobile hospital and later Czechoslovak hospital adaptations.
What they found
Duran overcame arm-to-arm transfusion with stored blood. Holubec entered Spain in May 1937 with the Czechoslovak Committee to Aid Democratic Spain. The method was adapted in Czechoslovak hospitals, cited into the 1950s despite Soviet expertise, then forgotten amid technological backwardness and semi-peripheral status. Both men tied transfusion to wartime solidarity and internationalism.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is not a randomised trial of transfusion protocols, nor a complete inventory of every Czechoslovak blood bank. Forgotten does not mean the method never worked.
Key terms
- Duran Jordà method
- Spanish Civil War technique of storing and transporting blood, ending reliance on direct arm-to-arm transfusion.
- Karel Holubec
- Czechoslovak volunteer doctor who used Duran's blood in a mobile hospital in Spain and helped transfer the method home.
- Internationalist blood
- Solidarity campaigns that collected and moved blood across Spain and Czechoslovakia under wartime public administration.
- Semi-peripheral transfer
- Diffusion via Catalan, Spanish, French and Czech publications and performance rather than metropolitan Anglo-American channels.
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Duran's method overcame?
Common questions
What did Duran's method replace?
Direct arm-to-arm transfusions.
When did Holubec enter Spain?
May 1937, in a mobile hospital funded by the Czechoslovak Committee to Aid Democratic Spain.
Why was the transfer forgotten?
Semi-peripheral channels plus later Sovietisation and isolation from Western Europe.
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