In Vienna, in nineteen hundred,
Doctor Karl Landsteiner studied blood,
When blood was passed from one to another,
Sometimes it helped, and sometimes it went wrong,
He took some drops from friends and from himself,
He mixed them two by two on glass,
Some mixtures stayed smooth and red,
And some clumped up like tiny beads.
Oh, he's not a vampire,
It's Landsteiner's blood groups,
The groups we call A, B and O,
The right blood keeps you well.
He wrote it down in nineteen-oh-one,
But for years, few doctors paid it heed,
Then in New York, Reuben Ottenberg,
Matched the types before he gave the blood,
And matching blood kept patients safe,
The right match helped to save a life,
In nineteen thirty, Landsteiner won,
The Nobel Prize for what he'd found.
Oh, he's not a vampire,
It's Landsteiner's blood groups,
The groups we call A, B and O,
The right blood keeps you well.
While people read of Dracula,
And shivered at the thought of bites,
A quiet doctor with his glass slides,
Made giving blood a safer gift.
Today, if you should ever need some blood,
A nurse will check your type before it flows,
Your blood and the new blood have to match,
Because of Landsteiner, the doctor knows.
Oh, he's not a vampire,
It's Landsteiner's blood groups,
The groups we call A, B and O,
The right blood keeps you well.
No vampires here, just blood types.
