History of Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses originated as a branch of the Bible Student movement, which developed in the United States in the 1870s among followers of Christian Restorationist minister Charles Taze Russell. Bible Student missionaries were sent to England in 1881 and the first overseas branch was opened in London in 1900. The group took on the name International Bible Students Association and by 1914 it was also active in Canada, Germany, Australia and other countries. The movement split into several rival organizations after Russell's death in 1916, with one—led by Russell's successor, Joseph "Judge" Rutherford—retaining control of both his magazine, "The Watch Tower", and his legal and publishing corporation, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.
Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusions
From 1931, when the name "Jehovah's witnesses" was adopted, Watch Tower Society publications maintained the view of Society founder Charles Taze Russell that the reference to abstaining from the eating of blood in the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15:19–29 was a "suggestion" to be given to Gentile converts. Watch Tower publications during the presidency of Joseph Franklin Rutherford commended the commercial and emergency uses of blood. A 1925 issue of "The Golden Age" commended a man for donating blood 45 times without payment. In 1927, "The Watchtower" noted, without elaboration, that in Genesis 9, God decreed that Noah and his offspring "must not eat the blood, because the life is in the blood". In 1940 "Consolation" magazine reported on a woman who accidentally shot herself with a revolver in her heart and survived a major surgical procedure during which an attending physician donated a quart of his own blood for transfusion.