BOTTLED BLOOD

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 117, 13 November 1935, Page 18

BOTTLED BLOOD

EMPLOYED IX BTJSSIA

ITS USE BY SURGEONS

There can be no doubt that the foreign physiologists attending the International Congress, of Physiology in Leningrad and Moscow would be taken to the Sklifasovsky Institute and various public hospitals, there tp behold the work that Soviet physicians and surgeons are doing in collecting and preserving dead men's blood to be used in emergency transfusions, writes Waldemar Kaempffert in the "New York Times." In this field the Russians are pioneers. A few years ago Professor Chaumov showed fhat the blood of a dog not too long dead might be successfully transferred to a live one. Driven by the sudden necessity of finding a human donor of blood for a pjtient who was dying from a self-inflicted razor gash, Dr. Judine. head of a Moscow hospital, decided in a flash to extend the principle. In the hospital mu.gue lay the cadaver of a man of sixty who had died six hours before from a fractured skull. Judine drew off 450 cubic centimeters of the dead man's blood and injected it into the veins of the wouldbe suicide. Four days later the recipient walked out of the hospital with a dead man's blood in his veins. Ever since Soviet emergency hospitals keep on hand bottles of blood prevented from clumping by sodium citrate and other standard stabilisers. A SUMMARY OF RESULTS. The more recent aspect? of this development are given by Professor A. E-gdasaraov in "Front Nauki I Tekhniki" (the -Scientific and Technical Front) and by Dr., B. N. Gusyev in "Clinichesakaya Meditzina" (Clinical Medicine) in articles which are sketchy but still informative enough for our purpose. A summary of the results in some three hundred transfusions carried out according to the new method indicates that six hours after blood has been collected it still possesses its more important properties. In the case of instant death blood will keep as a liquid without any stabiliser for three or four weeks, but whether this is true in a bottle is not clear from the Russian journals. When the wound that caused death is so large that bacteria can enter, the blood is useless for transfusion because of the possibility of infection. "Wassernvn tests for syphilis' are always essential. Because the lives of many wounded soldiers could be saved by emergency transfusions in base hospitals Dr. S. S. Bryukhonenko—the man who cut off a dog's head and kept it alive for two hours with the aid of an artificial heart and circulatory system—has invented a special receptacle for transporting blood. Already the principal railway stations in Soviet Russia have quarters to which blood is carried by this means. Dr. Gurtayev mentions 131 transfusions which he has carried out in a railroad hospital since 1932 — I all with preserved blood ar;d all with- | out a fatality. i Bryukhonenko claims that malaria germs die in preserved blood after about five days. His preservative is synanthrine, a Bayer preparation. American physicians will demand dej tails. They will argue that more | synanthrine would have to be mixed with the blood than is called for to act as a preservative and that this additional amount may be toxic. At any rate Bryukhonenko says that his preserved blood will kill malaria germs in the body. Dr. Guyasev even goes so far as to say that the transfusion of fresh healthy or of well-preserved blood will cure some infectious diseases, such as typhus and dysentery. j Again American physicians will ask for clinical proof. CLASSIFICATION OF BLOOD. It is elementary knowledge that the I blood of a donor must match that of a I recipient. If it doe~ not. agglutination j (dumping"! and death follow. Hence the rare taken to identify blood, classify i+ into one of the four main groups discovered by Dr. Landsteiner of the Rockefeller Institute, and to pelrct for transfusion only the one that will mix well with that of the recipient. One of these four groups is designated by the letter "O." It is found in the blood of all races and may well have been the primeval type. Because it I is the "universal donor" a very little of it can be used in all transfusions. But the Soviet scientists would limit (h? practice to wartime emergencies. They claim that the other three types may also be thus sparingly transfused with beneficial effect.-, in stimulating the recipient's own blood. In fact the Russians have ventured to transfuse a little cow's, dog's, and goat's I blood and claim some success in the treatment of chronic stomach ulcers and of blood poisoning caused by infection.

Why this shoula be so Professor V. A" Bogolomets. president of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, attempts to explain in a theory of his own. To him the blood preserved in a bottle is more than a substitute for that of the patient who is to receive it. It is a powerful stimulant. It has rrspnerative powers creat-d by the interaction of its .vn proteins with ;lio,-r of the recipient's blood. Cytolisut;s (products of cellular decomposition of transfused blood) also have a stimulating effect.