It is an extraordinary paradox that war, the cause of so much havoc and misery, could be associated with important life-saving innovations in fields such as haematology. Yet the connections are protean and go back to the beginnings of history. Herodotus tells us that the Scythians drank the blood of their slain enemies, presumably predicated on the belief that blood contained the essence of their bravery, which could be transferred from the victim to the victor.
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