Or rather: New Insights on Blood Evidence from the Turin Shroud, Giulio Fanti’s latest, rather wide ranging collection of brief comments into what seem to have been quite detailed investigations into the blood on the Shroud.1 I would be reluctant to comment on it at all had not Fanti referred to the “deafening silence” of medievalists on the paper, which seems to imply that unless I break the silence, “qui tacet consentire videtur.”2
Rather than attempt to discuss every one of Fanti’s dozen or so observations, I’d like to call attention to just a few of them as starting points for further comment or clarification. Macroscopically, Fanti observes differences in colour in and around the bloodstains, and uses these to distinguish between ‘pre-mortem blood,’ ‘post-mortem blood,’ ‘serum’ and ‘oedemic fluid.’ The last is detected using CIE-XYZ colour co-ordinates measured from a photograph, but he doesn’t explain the others except as “being characterised by different colors.”
Identifying areas of the same colour is not easy. One way, as Fanti follows in his first investigation, is to select some representative points, analyse them in terms of co-ordinates, and see if they conform to discreet areas when plotted on a graph. Here are Fanti’s points and graph for the lance wound, although I have removed the letters identifying each spot, and the grouping that Fanti assigns to them.
To me, there are two identifiable clumps, and a couple of outliers, at about (1125, 4800) and (1118, 4250), but that’s not how Fanti saw it.
Fanti groups Q, P and R, which appear very close to the ‘blue’ area he identifies as oedemic fluid, with S and T, surely on the basis of where they are rather than whether they are actually a different colour. Point A is missing altogether.
Another way of seeing whether areas are the same colour or not is to ask Photoshop, or some such processor, to replace areas of the same colour with something very distinctive. Here I have pinpointed the areas indicated, and replaced them with red (Blood), Blue (Oedemic Fluid), and yellow (Serum) to see if the exact colours of those same spots are duplicated elsewhere. As we can see, the blood spots are certainly distinctive, but none of the other areas of alleged body fluids are sufficiently distinctive for us to be confident that they truly exist.
Another thing I’d like to look at here is the size of erythrocytes (red blood cells). Generally speaking they are described as about 6-7µm wide. However, Fanti describes – and shows – various particles from the Shroud which may have the characteristic ‘doughnut’ shape of a blood cell, but are much smaller than 6µm. The question is, how small can a blood cell be?
Photomicrograph from Fanti’s paper, with a couple of 6µm blood cells added for comparison.
Fanti references a 1967 paper about Egyptian mummies by Rabbino-Massa et al., “who found rounded discoidal elements with central concavity and with a diameter of 4-5 micrometers.” Sadly, I cannot access this paper, but I note that Luigi Giacometti and Bruno Chiarelli found “bodies that morphologically resembled red blood corpuscles,” and although they do not give a size, they say they were “located in spaces which in form, size and distribution could correspond to remnants of blood vessels.”3 Ötzi, the iceman, has yielded red blood cells which “exhibit a discoidal, concave surface with a diameter between 5.8 and 6.4 µm,”4 and Wilhelm Graf reported “characteristic red blood corpuscles […] slightly shrunk, and the biconcave shape was not seen,” in the laryngeal tissue of Egyptian mummies, and “red blood corpuscles” which “had a characteristic appearance with the form and dimensions of normal r.b.c. in ordinary histological sections,” in a Viking.5
Ancient blood cells are far from unknown, but never, as far as I can find, deflated into tiny models of themselves, and Giulio Fanti’s experiments with concentrated urea solution are inconsistent with other reports involving urea. His Figure 12 (3), (below left) shows what he saw after placing red blood cells in “a saturated solution of urea,” but a more typical configuration is shown below right. Some of the cells shrink into echinocytes, and others seem to have burst, but most are not much reduced in overall diameter. It is a pity that there are very few comparative studies. In a paper like this, it is necessary to refer to other work before coming to egregious conclusions, and it is a pity that of Fanti’s 46 references, only 3 are not specifically about the Shroud.
From Guilio Fanti,1 and Yvonne Lange & Theodore Steck.6 10µm bars.
Fanti identifies three types of blood, slightly confusingly termed Type A, Type B and Type C, although this has nothing to do with ABO blood typing. The first are the sub-micrometer sized particles observed adhering to Shroud fibres and scattered on the sticky tape. They are, in my opinion, far too small to be erythrocytes, even shrunken ones. Fanti also shows a spectrum for one of these particles, and declares that “the elements contained therein are compatible with those of blood: among other elements, Carbon-C, Oxygen-O, Iron-Fe, Calcium-Ca, Chlorine-Cl, Nitrogen-N, Potassium-K, and Phosphorus-P were detected.” Actually they weren’t. Here is the spectrum and its analysis:
The element list is C, Au, O, Fe, Na, Cl, Ca, Si, Al and one I think must be K. There is no Nitrogen and no Phosphorus, and no Zinc, Magnesium or Sulphur, all of which might be expected in such an analysis. (Fanti attributes the Au and Si, no doubt correctly, to the mount)
Fanti’s next type consists of lumps of reddish material, up to a tenth of a millimetre across and with no signs of rounded particles. A complete elemental analysis consists of C, O, Mg, Al, Si, Cl, K, Ca and Fe. Again, no Nitrogen, no Phosphorus, no Zinc, no Sulphur.
The third type consist of even rarer particles, but more characteristically doughnut shaped, not unrealistically smaller than normal erythrocytes, and this time including nitrogen among the elemental analysis (C, O, N, Al, Mg, K, Fe, Cl, Ca, Na, plus Au and Si). On the other hand, they lack the orange-red colour of the other particles, and are, as Fanti says: “too few to be definitively distinguished from possible bacteria.”
Some of Fanti’s rather abrupt conclusions are, to my mind, insufficiently supported. A statement that some of the putative blood particles are mixed with clay, limestone, ochre and vermilion is accompanied by elemental maps of a small patch of reddish particles adhering to a Shroud fibre.
Here we can see that concentrated patches of orange-red particles are readily associated with oxygen, iron, calcium and oxygen; and that nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus are widely and evenly dispersed. There is no mercury or sulphur map, so we cannot say anything about vermilion from this evidence. A single bright spot of potassium is precisely associated with silicon and oxygen, but it is too small for any significance to be drawn from it.
Research on the Shroud supported by scientific data and appropriate microphotographs is to be commended, and I wish more people were able to investigate it with the specificity and equipment that Fanti has been able to. I think he is to be commended for his work, and although I do not find that it supports authenticity, it does contribute to the probability that the alleged blood on the Shroud really is blood.
1 ‘New Insights on Blood Evidence from the Turin Shroud,’ Giulio Fanti, Archives of Hematology Case Reports and Reviews, 2024
2 A maxim coined by Pope Boniface VIII, at almost the same time as the Shroud was made.
3 ‘The Skin of Egyptian Mummies: A Study in Survival,’ Luigi Giacometti and Bruno Chiarelli, Archives of Dermatological Research, 1968
4 ‘Preservation of 5300 year old Red Blood Cells in the Iceman,’ Marek Janko et al., Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 2012
5 ‘Preserved Histological Structures in Egyptian Mummy Tissues and Ancient Swedish Skeletons,’ Wilhelm Graf, Cells Tissues Organs, 1949
6 ‘Mechanism of Red Blood Cell Acanthocytosis and Echinocytosis in Vivo,’ Yvonne Lange & Theodore Steck, The Journal of Membrane Biology, 1984
Hello, Hugh,
I informed Giulio Fanti of your review of his paper, and the following, below, is his response to your comments.
Best regards,
Teddi
COMMENTS ON HUGH FAREY’S NOTES: “NEW BLOOD STUDIES”
First of all, although honored by the final double praise, I am surprised that at the beginning of the document Farey writes: “I would be reluctant to comment on it at all had not Fanti referred to the “deafening silence” of medievalists on the paper”. Why “reluctant”? Perhaps because for Farey it is better to remain silent on arguments that unequivocally demonstrate the presence of the blood of Jesus Christ in the Holy Shroud? Perhaps because for Farey it is better to remain silent on arguments that lead us back to the immense suffering that the God-Man suffered for us visible on the Holy Shroud? Perhaps because for Farey it is better to keep in the dark about these scientific results the public that naively follows his website?
Farey writes at the beginning of his comments: “Rather than attempt to discuss every one of Fanti’s dozen or so observations, I’d like to call attention to just a few of them as starting points for further comment or clarification.”. I interpret this choice of Farey as his inability to comment on many of my observations, limiting himself to commenting on the few of which he is able to find some weak or questionable point. For example, the finding of blood fibrin deposited on the linen fibers of the Holy Shroud is an unpublished result (as far as I know) and very interesting to support that that linen was in contact with a wounded person.
Farey begins to discuss the colorimetric analysis performed by Christian Privitera where, however, he forgets to observe that this analysis is only preliminary: “A preliminary study not yet published, carried out with engineer Christian Privitera, has highlighted the presence of an almost transparent substance in the interstices between the threads of the cloth in the bloodstained area bloodstains of the side wound.”
Farey immediately tries to downgrade the interesting work done by Privitera by writing: “…using CIE-XYZ colour co-ordinates measured from a photograph …” and forgetting that the analysis in question was not done by “a” common “photograph” but by a quantitative photograph obtained on the basis of various experimental colorimetric analyses performed on the Holy Shroud, see:
https://www.matec-conferences.org/articles/matecconf/pdf/2015/17/matecconf_wopsas2015_02002.pdf
Farey then interprets: “To me, there are two identifiable clumps, and a couple of outliers,” but obviously he does not integrate the results obtained in the light of the aforementioned paper which would probably lead him to a different conclusion.
To contradict the results obtained by Privitera, Farey presents an old method based on the so-called false colors obtained through a common image processing software, but, unfortunately, this time it seems that he uses a common photograph of the Holy Shroud not corrected based on colorimetric measurements, as Privitera did.
It also seems that the chosen coloration considers a range of colors of interest that is too wide, so as a result the sensitivity to color variations is significantly reduced and the water stains end up having the same bluish color as the body image.
Farey then concludes this argument by declaring “As we can see, the blood spots are certainly distinctive, but none of the other areas of alleged body fluids are sufficiently distinctive for us to be confident that they truly exist.” Obviously this statement is acceptable if it is referred to the low sensitivity method proposed by Farey, but it is absolutely not valid if applied to the much more sensitive and colorimetrically calibrated method that Privitera used.
In order not to go into too much detail, I will comment more briefly on other points raised by Farey who writes: “Ancient blood cells are far from unknown, but never, as far as I can find, deflated into tiny models of themselves, and Giulio Fanti’s experiments with concentrated urea solution are inconsistent with other reports involving urea.”, but he does not mention which other results are inconsistent with my experimental results, and I note that, unlike other works, many of my experimental results referred to saturated urea solutions.
Farey continues by writing: “It is a pity that there are very few comparative studies. In a paper like this, it is necessary to refer to other work before coming to egregious conclusions,…”. First of all, I do not seem to have made any “egregious” statement in my paper where I only reported the experimental result just obtained. I also note that, according to what is written in this statement, science could have great difficulty in progressing because it could not publish novelties obtained by applying the scientific method if someone else had not already discovered and published the content of the scientific communication.
Farey, who does not seem to me to be an expert in medicine and even less in hematology writes: “They are, in my opinion, far too small to be erythrocytes, even shrunken ones.” Aside from the fact that in the paper I wrote that these particles could be the result of echinocytes, Dr. Ennio Paiaro, quoted in the Acknowledgements, declared exactly the opposite!
Farey observes that the elemental analysis of the particles reported in the paper by SEM-EDX or XRF-EDX does not show the following elements that according to him should be contained in the blood: “There is no Nitrogen and no Phosphorus, and no Zinc, Magnesium or Sulphur, all of which might be expected in such an analysis.”
For example, even the elemental analysis of a recent human blood, reported the result in the following Figure 3, reported in the paper entitled “Could an anomaly in Turin Shroud blood reopen the 1988-radiocarbon-dating result?” and published in the World Scientific News Journal, Sulfur, magnesium and zinc do not appear there either. In fact, it happens that some trace elements are sometimes not evidenced by the specific analysis performed.
Farey’s observation, omitted in the paper under discussion but highlighted in the paper cited above, regarding the lack of nitrogen in the Type A blood of the Holy Shroud, is important. For an explanation of this lack, please refer to the aforementioned paper.
Finally, it is very strange that Farey states that: “Some of Fanti’s rather abrupt conclusions are, to my mind, insufficiently supported.” In fact, the referees of the medical journal, who I think know a little more than Farey, but who are obviously impartial and not biased like Farey appears, summarized their comments as follows: “The manuscript entitled: News on the hematic material of the Holy Shroud in Turin consistent with the tortures of Jesus Christ focuses on the central idea of the manuscript. The analysis of the data and interpretation of the results are good. The author has taken care of ethical considerations while developing the manuscript. The writing style and language are good. The references are judiciously used in the manuscript.” The Editor finally commented: “Congrats on doing a good job on the paper!”
I end my comment by noting how, especially in the field of discussion on the Holy Shroud, many people are, or want to be for some other reason, rigid in their conclusions, closed to scientific novelties and unwilling to change their preconceived ideas. Farey wrote: “… although I do not find that it supports authenticity, it does contribute to the probability that the alleged blood on the Shroud really is blood.”
So in agreement with the scientists of the STuRP and others, the Holy Shroud is bloody, and in agreement with the paper under discussion this blood, or rather at least a part of this blood, the Type A blood, is composed of erythrocytes, serum and fibrin.
I am not used to considering hypotheses that I consider scientifically absurd such as Farey’s who considers the Holy Shroud to be made by a medieval artist, but I wonder now how this hypothetical artist could have thought of adding blood serum to his handwork (even in micrometrically wide patches) which is practically invisible to sunlight but to ultraviolet light, as well as adding fibrin that is not coagulated with blood (as generally happens) and visible only under a microscope which apparently did not exist in the Middle Ages. Finally, the icing on the cake, the hypothetical forger would also have had to keep the completed work for years alongside radioactive material (which was not known in the Middle Ages) to ensure that the analyzed blood had a non-negligible beta emission!