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Rivers of Blood
This blog was developed to accompany the exhibition Rag: A History of Blood (27 February 2026 - 16 October 2026).
This blog contains some racist historic materials.
Blood is a powerful symbol in many cultures. It is a symbol of piousness, of power, of good and evil. The antisemitic myth of the blood libel alleged that Jewish people murdered and drank the blood of Christian children.
Blood was used to justify homophobia and racism. In the early 1900s some American states introduced the one drop rule, which stated that any person with one drop of ‘black blood’ was considered to be black and so denied equal rights. The first state to pass this law was Tennessee in 1910 and the last was Virginia in 1930.
‘Racial arithmetic’ was used to explain the complex systems that were adopted in some places to calculate race by blood. The percentages changed over time and differed by race - sometimes it was a quarter, sometimes an eighth, sometimes a drop. Scientific racists used the term ‘miscegenation’ to describe the mixing of blood between races.
In European fascist ideology the idea of ‘blood purity’ argues that a return to a purer genetic pool will mean a return to an imagined greater era of their supposedly pure blood forebears. According to this idea, blood determines both ethnicity and nationality.
It’s All the Same to Him Poster (reproduction, 2026)
This poster, produced in 1945, was a protest against the segregation of American blood donations by the Red Cross and the US military. Youthbuilders, the New York-based group who produced this poster, aimed to engage young people in education and civic life.
At first the Red Cross refused all blood donations from black people. After protests, the policy was changed to allow for donations but required that blood from black and white people was kept separate. This ruling specifically targeted black donors – the blood from Asian and Latin American people was not similarly separated. In some American states, including Arkansas and Louisiana, segregation of blood donations continued into the late 1960s.
Image courtesy of YWCA USA
Journal of Venereal Disease Information (1946)
This is a pseudo-scientific analysis of a group of almost 400 black men in Tuskegee, Alabama. The United States Public Health Service, who organised the study, intentionally targeted the rural poor with little formal education. These men were told by doctors that they were being treated for ‘bad blood’. The doctors were actually studying the effects of untreated syphilis.
The trials lasted from 1932 to 1972. Painful examinations, including spinal taps, were carried out on the men. Some tried to avoid the doctors’ visits, with one man described as ‘hiding in a corn field’ to escape examination. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment became widely known and has been cited as one of the reasons for a disproportionately low uptake of vaccines by black people.
Perkins National Herbs (c.1910)
This product was marketed as a remedy for ‘impurities in the blood’. The advertising gave a long list of conditions caused by impure blood, which included syphilis, constipation, malaria, pimples and cancer. It was created in the 1890s by an American who styled himself as Dr James Perkins. There is no evidence he was a qualified doctor or ever received any medical training.
Perkins, and others like him, used popular misunderstanding around the role of blood in disease as a way to sell their products. Perkins worked as a travelling drug salesman until 1916 when he was forced into retirement after he was arrested and fined for violating the Food and Drugs Act. He had been caught adding strychnine and other toxic ingredients to his products.
Choices Board Game (1990s)
By the end of the 1980s, Edinburgh had an HIV infection rate that was almost seven times the national average. The British press dubbed Edinburgh the ‘AIDS capital of Europe’. Although HIV is a blood-borne virus that can be transmitted through blood transfusions and the use of non-sterile syringes, early HIV-policy was focused on the risks to homosexual men.
This board game was created by the Lothian Health Board and Lothian Regional Council as part of a campaign aimed at raising awareness of the risks surrounding HIV and AIDS. 200 copies were distributed to schools, residential children’s homes and youth centres. High levels of heroin use, and needle sharing, was a major contributor to the high rates of HIV in Edinburgh.
Courtesy of Lothian Health Services Archive, Edinburgh University Library
Macaura’s Blood Circulator (c.1890)
This device was marketed by its inventor, Dr Gerald Macaura, as improving blood circulation through vibrations. According to Macaura it could cure paralysis, deafness, tuberculosis, rheumatism and 'unnatural propensity' (homosexuality and masturbation). In one public demonstration of this blood-curing device, which took place in Cheltenham in 1911, a Mrs Bellamy apparently went from being confined to a wheelchair to being immediately and miraculously cured. She was later seen running down the street, shouting, jumping and pushing her wheelchair in front of her.
Macaura was eventually exposed as a fraud whose treatment was ineffective and whose medical qualification was faked. Even his name was a lie – a pseudonym he had adopted. In 1914 Macaura was sentenced to three years in prison for practicing without a licence.
