Bernard Fantus was born to David and Ida Fantus in Budapest, Hungary. Fantus was educated at Real-Gymnasium in Vienna, Austria. From a young age, his parents supported his ambition to be a medical doctor. When Fantus was 15, he emigrated with his parents to the United States. Fantus was an apprentice to Paul Leuchner at his drug store in Detroit, Michigan, and began training as a pharmacist. Later, the family relocated to Chicago.
Fantus received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1899 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He did postdoctoral research at the University of Strasbourg in 1906 and the University of Berlin in 1909, and received a Master of Science from the University of Michigan in 1917, where he had done research in Pharmacology in 1901.
Fantus was promoted from Adjunct Professor in 1900 to Full Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics in 1913 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. From 1910 to 1915, he conducted research in the University’s Pharmacological Laboratory in order to formulate medications that were more enjoyable to children. Fantus studied candy confection and worked with candy-makers to determine that “sweet tablets” would be the best way to administer medicine to kids in a candy form. His goal was to create medications that were palatable to children, but also easy and inexpensive to manufacture in order to maximize distribution.
In 1915, Fantus compiled his research in a book titled Candy Medication, to make sweet tablets commonplace by giving pharmacists and physicians a guidebook.
In 1918, Fantus became an Associate Professor of Therapeutics at Rush Medical College.
Fantus married Emily Senn, a nurse who he met at Cook County Hospital, and the couple had a daughter named Ruth.
Throughout Fantus’ career, he noted the importance of having access to blood for transfusions, and the persistent lack of accessibility. Transfusions were not readily available for emergency traumas. With the Spanish Revolution underway, Fantus was introduced to the idea of blood storage, and he immediately saw the promise and the innumerable lives that could be saved, especially in times of war. His research demonstrated that blood storage was relatively simple, and establishing a laboratory for blood storage in the United States would not be complicated. Fantus’ daughter Ruth is credited with coming up with the term “blood bank.”
As World War II started, Fantus was motivated to use the blood from American donors stateside to save the lives of U.S. soldiers overseas. Fantus spent years in the laboratory perfecting methods of transfusion. After obtaining a suitable room at Cook County Hospital and putting Dr. Elizabeth Schermer in charge of the laboratory, the blood bank officially opened on March 15, 1937.
Cook County Hospital initially kept a “Blood Bank Account” ledger that kept track of deposits in donors’ accounts when they donated blood and “withdrawals” when a patient received some. The hospital would collect $10 from a patient to pay the donor. Today, hundreds of national network collection sites in all 50 states collect donor blood.
In 1940, Fantus died from a heart attack suffered the previous year, and never got to see the worldwide impact of his work. He was buried at Forest Home Cemetery in Chicago.
In 2015, a portrait of Fantus was added to Oak Park Village Hall to commemorate the physician, who lived in Oak Park for the last 20 years of his life.
About Fantus, President Ronald Reagan said in 1987, “Dr. Fantus’ idea revolutionized surgery and transfusion therapy. Most major surgery done today would be impossible without the existence of blood banks. Today we take them for granted, but in fact we owe their existence to the creative thinking of a pioneer of American medicine.”