When Was The First Full Blood Count Test Carried Out?

There are countless blood tests available at pharmacies and each of them is designed to test for a particular condition, but there are few tests as commonly undertaken as the full blood count (FBC).

Whilst no single blood test can test for every condition, the full blood count is often the first test requested, as it provides a remarkable amount of information about the three main types of blood cells in the arteries: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.

Too few or too many of any of these cells can be a clear indicator of a wide range of issues, by checking the numbers of cells per volume of blood, the amount of haemoglobin, the volume of platelets and a wide range of other measures.

The origin of the test and the ranges that are used as a baseline to determine if you need further tests are older than you may expect, and date back to the early era of medicine, before automated systems existed to measure complete blood counts.

Who Invented Full Blood Counts?

The first step towards complete blood counts or FBC tests was the pioneering microbiologist Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, who was the first person to describe the existence of red blood cells in 1674.

By the 19th century, both platelets and white blood cells were also visible through achromatic microscope lenses, which meant that the first complete blood counts were possible, although the exact measurements and ranges had not been confirmed quite yet.

The very first full blood count was believed to have been undertaken by Karl Vierodt, who manually measured blood count by taking a sample of blood and carefully spreading it onto a slide coated with egg white, a process that took more than three hours per sample to complete.

It was an extremely arduous and time-consuming process until the development of both mechanical and electronic processes that simplified the blood counting process and made it much faster to garner meaningful results.

When Did Full Blood Counts Become Practical?

The first developments towards practical FBC tests began with the development of the haemocytometer, a device that more precisely measured out blood and provided a grid scale that made it far easier to measure cells per volume and blood.

As well as this, advanced staining techniques such as those developed by Paul Ehrlich and later Dmitrii Romanowsky helped make different types of red and white blood cells, with a similar but more sophisticated dying technique used to measure haemoglobin, a material found in various forms in the blood.

The first practical albeit still manual FBC test came in 1929 thanks to Maxwell Wintrobe, who developed a haematocrit test that was easy to mass produce, easy to scale and easy to reproduce results.

This was iterated upon by the development of automated cell counting techniques led by Wallace Coulter, who developed the Coulter counter that could count red and white blood cells, a system that would eventually be further developed throughout the 1960s.