Before, however, the bloods can be tested, a willing donor must be found, and this is not always an easy matter. During the war, even when transfusion was being practised on a large scale, there was never any difficulty in finding volunteers among the men that were more lightly wounded. In addition to the genuine and ready response which many men would make at once to a call for help in a matter of life and death, there was the glamour of novelty and the feeling of satisfaction following an act of conscious heroism--for such the sacrifice of blood was held to be, the days having long been forgotten when as much blood was “let” in the treatment of almost any ailment. In the Expeditionary Force, too, the unofficial reward of a fortnight’s leave in England proved a potent inducement, and the rejection of a volunteer on the ground of incompatibility was regarded almost as an injustice or as a reflection upon the physical condition of the candidate. In civilian life, however, such inducements cannot be held out, and it will be found that many a man “does not like the idea” of parting with a pint of blood, even though the sacrifice may save another’s life. Often, however, a near relative of the patient may happen to be willing and suitable, or, failing this, in a hospital ward there will usually be some young man who has been admitted for a slight operation, such as the radical cure of a hernia, and will accede to a request for blood if the procedure, its object, and its harmlessness to himself be briefly explained. Notoriety is fortunately seldom a motive for volunteering, and though paragraphs have occasionally appeared in the daily press with headings such as “Police Inspector’s Sacrifice,” this has probably not been done by the donor’s own wish. It is, after all, natural that to the mind of a layman the giving to another of so personal a possession as his blood should seem to be an act of heroism, and it is also natural that occasionally a man should feel some repugnance to taking part in a strange performance which he but dimly understands. To the young, on the other hand, the procedure may appeal by its faint flavour of adventure.