MIRACLES OF MEDICAL SCIENCE

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 291, 9 December 1936, Page 16

MIRACLES OF MEDICAL SCIENCE

il/TAN.Y are the fantastic experiments A performed recently in the cause of science, says tho French writer Pierre Devaux, Broukhanenko, a Russian, injected his “reviving fluid” into the corpse of a person who had been hanged and who had been dead some three hours. After the injectiou the face of the body became coloured, the heart began to beat again, and the corpse to breathe. Death, it is true, occurred again shortly. Judino was not to be outdone by the Russian: he injected the blood of cadavers into the veins of enfeebled sick people, into those whose blood bad been drained off by wounds. At first this fantastic transfusion, was accomplished by placing the corpse alongside of the sick person, linking them by means of aD India rubber tube furnished with a suction device. But to-day they .have evolved a method whereby the blood may bo preserved in ice until needed for injection. Bottled blood!

A recent Parisian test emphasised the paradoxical consequences of the development of “blood transfusion.” It is well-known, of course, that every blood donor is not suitable for any aud every receiver. There» are enemy bloods which, if mingled, would induce immediate death in tho person, as if his blood thickened in his arteries. Practically speaking, human bloods are divided into four groups and blood exchanges can be made only between individuals of different groups according to well-defined rules: the blood of the “zero group,” in particular, is totally useless to individuals of the other section?

SEA WATER BEST BLOOD

Injection Into Human Body

It is certain that the introduction into our veins of a blood which is not that of our relatives, loads to the most curious problems of heredity. A commoner in whom the blood of a marquis had been injected, could claim that he had noble blood in his veins. The case of a man from Marseilles is noteworthy. Ho was seriouly injured and tho doctor iujected the blood of a benevolent American iuto him. Revived, Marius sat up on the operating table of tho clinic and exclaimed in pure New Yorkese: “Allrightl Time is money! How much do 1 owe you for this little operation 2 ” It is to Dr. John ETSummers of the Omaha Hospital of tho State of Nebraska, however, to whom credit is due for having prepared a new and really extraordinary blood by pulverising aud distilling plants. Thanks to .he work of Fischer, ol Munich, a former Nobel prize winner, naturalists kuow that a close relation ship exists between the haemoglobin of our red globules and the green chloro--phyll of plants; but it was Summers, who, on a trip to Indo-China, discover-

ed that the natives retrieve blood losses by injecting into the veins of the invalid, water in which they have soaked liana leaves. By perfecting this primitive process, Summers obtained a vegetable blood of a prodigiously revivifying power. This so-called green blood seems to be revealed as so superior to natural blood that the American practitioner hope* to creato “super-animals," filled with vegetable blood —Perhaps, while awaiting its application to the human species, wo shall sco super-beasts who will supply us with vast quantities of meat, super-rabbits, a. large as mules, and super-hens who will lay eggs as large as fists. Further, biologist's have attempted and succeeded in utilising the mineral world: they have discovered the best blood in the world —sea waterl The late scientist, Quinton, was the first, we believe, to demonstrate that the white globules of our blood would live perfectly well in sea-water when they died in any other liquid. It should not be forgotten that during the months beforo birth, our being

lives ill water; on the 25th day after conception, the human embryo strongly resembles a fish. We have, besides, in our throat, witnesses, very definite vestiges, which correspond from the point of view of biological classifications, to the gills of a fish. Thus, in sp.te of his aerial existence, man indeed appears to bo a mysteriously aquatic being. It seems that the favored of nature have remained in those reeking seas of the first era, where, in water of 40 degrees, the first cells endowed with life began to develop. In the inside of his body, man (as well as all mammals) actually reproduces those initial conditions: the salty water of blood, like that of the sea, a temperature touching 40 degrees, which, only, would enable its cells to live.

Ilencc, miracles may bo accomplished by the injection of salt water into debilitated or bloodless subjects; tuberculosis, enteritis, eczema and the athrepsy of infants are effectively combatted. Since ordinary sea-water is four times more concentrated than the primary oceans, the water is naturally too salty for our. body; it must be diluted with distilled water to secure the injectable serum. Inversely one wonders why sailors, dying of thirst on their boats, do not yield to drinking sea water. It is because the concentration of the latter is very much higher than that of the blood and produces violent and rapid disturbances in the organism