William Liley and Fetal Transfusion: A Perspective in Fetal Medicine

Abstract

The circumstances under which Sir William Liley, KCMG, first conceived the idea of blood transfusion to mitigate temporarily the effects of severe haemolytic disease in an affected fetus, and carried it to a successful conclusion, all in a former war-time American army hospital, are presented. The significance of his achievement is estimated as being, not so much a major advance in the management of a serious fetal disease (which if left to itself would eventually disappear, albeit in millennia), but a first real demonstration that the fetus is accessible to skilled diagnosis and treatment, and thus has the inalienable right to be as much regarded as a patient as anybody else.