Transfusing blood from cadavers was a transfusion technique that originated during the 1930s in the Soviet Union and later experimented with in a few other places. The technique involved drawing blood from newly-deceased bodies and transfusing it to patients or storing it in blood banks. This paper discusses the case of Dr. Morteza Hakami, a professor of surgery at the University of Isfahan, who happened to learn about cadaveric blood transfusion in the 1960s, and decided to try out the method. Hakami first experimented with transfusing blood from dead dogs, and later found out about the technique the way it used to be practiced in the Soviet Union on human subjects. After finding a Russian textbook and receiving a religious permit from the ulama, Hakami ended up collecting blood from cadavers in Isfahan and using their blood for curing patients. Although Hakami and his assistant claimed that the technique was successful and promoted it in medical venues, cadaveric transfusions never became integrated into the blood supply system of Iran.  My aim in this paper is twofold. First, I wish to examine the implications of experimenting with (dead) human tissues, the controversies surrounding the practice, and its moral and religious ethics in Iranian society. As I consider cadaveric transfusion a Russian therapeutic method imported from the Eastern Bloc, I examine Hakami’s effort in the Cold War context in Iran. At this time in Iran, practices of blood were performed mainly based on “Western” medicine. I argue that Hakami’s introduction to cadaveric transfusion emerged as an isolated, and later a forgotten case, mainly because it did not fit into the Western “scientific” canon of medicine.  Second, I use the case of cadaveric transfusion in Iran to propose whether there is something meaningful to learn about failed and ineffective medical practices. I ask how we can deal with those practices that did not attach to the historical chain of progress and did not have a formative role in the development of contemporary medical knowledge. I argue that such forgotten practices offer incredible opportunities for social historians and historians of medicine, for they embody the tensions among various actors, institutions, and spaces, and explain the context of their unfulfillment.