The transfusion of blood is of undoubted benefit in several diseases, and in surgery it holds a well-established position, with an increasing field of utility. But the technical difficulties of this rather delicate operation interfere with its more frequent employment. The usual methods, those of the Carrel suture and the Crile and Elsberg cannulas, require considerable experience, and the first attempts of the surgeon are often unsuccessful.
The Brewer tube is much simpler and apparently serves quite as well as the first-named methods. Even with this, as with the cannula and suture, the difficulty lies in the fact that the limbs of the donor and recipient maintain a position which interferes materially with the surgeon's work, and at the critical moment any slight movement may disturb the anastomosis or prevent a perfect transfusion.
To obviate this, for some time past in the research laboratory, we have used a rubber tube