(Ocean Robbins) In the 17th century, the European medical world was abuzz with the possibility that blood could be transfused from one organism to another. The British had done some dog-to-dog transfusions, and their archrivals, the French, decided to up the ante by transfusing lambs’ blood into human beings. The court physician to King Louis XIV, an ambitious experimenter named Jean-Baptiste Denis, tried in 1668 to cure an infamous Paris “madman” by giving him serial transfusions. When the second procedure proved fatal, with the subject shaking in a violent fit and dying the next day, Denis was arrested. After a trial and inquiry, the practice of transfusion — even human to human — was prohibited, and it remained a rare occurrence for the next 150 years.