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So, today it occurred to me to wonder what a unit of blood is, in volume.
The internet said "approximately a pint", so I said, "oh, those bloody medics again, too special to call it a pint like everyone else".
Except it's not. It's around 525 ml, which is 43 ml smaller than a proper Imperial pint and 52 ml bigger than a colonial pint, and 40-odd ml may not be much blood but is frankly more than I care to lose track of.
So, again, what the hell, medics?
@cerebrate ...I mean *parts* of it are, but figuring out which parts is a hard problem.
@cerebrate that’s medicine for you, making it up as we go
@cerebrate AFAIK it's not precisely defined in volume terms for whole blood: one unit = one donation and the exact amount donated is a bit variable. I gather mean unit size varies a bit from country to country too.
Back in my biomedical days I'd have dreamed of that level of consistency. One of the most important parameters for the system I was modeling was only known within a factor of two.
Or according to some sources, a factor of ten, but those sources all traced back to a single paper by my late boss, about whom the kindest thing I can say is