of a large-scale emergency, the Blood Bank’s stores began to grow, bottle by bottle. They could
now also perform more sophisticated blood-typing and pre-typing of patients. Soutter’s insistence on reliable blood banking proved its worth many times over when, on November 28, 1942, a
popular and packed Boston nightclub, the Cocoanut Grove, caught fire. Of the reported 450 dead or injured, 114 were rushed to Mass General for treatment where they were offered the blood products newly collected by the Blood Bank.
Top: Lamar Soutter, M.D., first director of Massachusetts General Hospital blood bank Bottom: Refreigerators storing plasma (Photos courtesy of the Massachusetts General Hospital Archives and Special Collections)
Soutter continued as the part time Director of the Blood Bank (while also pursuing his career
as a surgeon) from 1942 to 1952, with a leave from 1943-1946 for war duty. But, as a history of
Mass General, by its former director (and Lamar Soutter’s boss), Nathaniel Faxon, makes clear,
it was at the Blood Bank that the outlines of Soutter’s career as an innovative - and strong-willed 43