THE THERAPEUTIC USE OF BLOOD

August 17, 1912

An interesting development in minor surgery is the use of blood to stop hemorrhage. For this purpose blood may be drawn from a normal person and injected subcutaneously at once or, if preferred, a sterile flask with a coiled wire may be used to receive the blood, which is then defibrinated so as to be ready for injection. If haste is not required a simple procedure is to allow the blood to stand in the ice-box in a sterile bottle, the serum being used for injection as required. From 10 to 20 c.c. may be injected, and the dose repeated several times if desirable. As substitutes for human serum, beef-serum or that of the horse or rabbit may be used. The possibility of anaphylactic reactions from the use of foreign serums makes the latter somewhat less desirable. Blood-serum is also efficacious when administered locally, and applied to oozing surfaces it possesses marked hemostatic properties. Good results follow injections of blood or serum in hemorrhage of the new-born, except when life is endangered from exsanguination; in these cases direct transfusion is indicated. In hereditary hemophilia injection of serum is useful, probably because it causes a stimulation of the bone-marrow, resulting in an increase of thrombokinase, which both Sahli and Morawitz find is lacking in hemophilics. The treatment of the toxemias of pregnancy with serum of normal pregnant women also promises well, and even now many cases have been recorded in which the treatment has given satisfactory results. The mode of action in these cases is unknown.