BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21165, 23 April 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS.

REMARKABLE BELIEF.

CHANGED PERSONALITIES.

IDEA SCOUTED BY DOCTORS.

The extraordinary belief that blood transfusions result in the blood-receiver taking on the characteristics of the donor is causing considerable perturbation i n Britain to medical men and to patients alike. In many instances, hospital patients in fear of this, have died rather than accept blood transfusions that might have enabled them to live.

Almost every city and largo town in Britain has a transfusion service, and th» call for donors increases yearly, but their services are frequently refused by patients who fear that their personalities may be changed by the infusion of another blood. " Only last week, when I was lectur. ing in Darwen, Lancashire, I came across an instance of this belief," Mr. P. L, Oliver, secretary of the London Blood Transfusion Service, stated recently. " The chairman of the meeting said he knew of a case in Lancashire where a bright, happy cheerful lad had become sullen, morose, and—to use the chairman's own word—sneaky, after havin<» had a blood transfusion. Kelatives Mystified. " The lad's relatives were mystified by the change until they discovered that the same characteristics were also manifested by the blood donor. Of course, I immediately scouted the possibility of the lad's present condition being due to the transfusion, but it is not easy to kill such a belief. " The whole idea of blood transfusion is to stimulate the patient to make his own blood. Actually, the blood of the donor remains in the body for a very short period, and there is no danger whatever of any disease or characteristics being passed with the blood." Several prominent West End surgeons also scouted the idea that there could be any danger in transfusions. All blood donors, they pointed out, are subjected to the most rigid tests before being accepted. Character, of course, cannot easily be tested. Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, the famous surgeon, declared that he had never heard of any case wjjgre either disease or personal characteristics were transferred by blood transfusions. " I wouldn't like to say that such a thing was impossible, but in all my career, I have never heard of such a case," he said. Woman's Interesting Claim. That blood transfusion has imbued her with the personality of the donor is the remarkable claim made by a Sheffield woman. She is Mrs. Nellie the wife of a corporation baths employee. following a blood transfusion three years ago, when her life was almost despaired of, Mrs. Webb has been endowed, so she says, with a dual personality in which her own self at times is completely submerged in the personality of another. She says she believes too, that she assumes in varying degrees, the intellect of the blood donor—a young medical student and although a woman of limited education—she was compelled for family reasons to leave a board school at the ape of 12—she now indulges in literary activitieshas. distinct artistic leanings, and : at time? an almost irresistible desire to explore the field of medicine, all of which ambitions were foreign to heiS nature before her illness three years ago. Strange Influence. •

' This woman with two " selves," r,t she regards herself, is nearly 40 years of age, and has a son aged 18 and a daughter aged 12. " The transfusion followed a severe operation, and my whole outlook has altered," she says. " I have acquired a craving for antiques which I never knew before, and I have a peculiar urge to, write short 6tories and magazine articles. I never dreamed of doing such things before, but several ol: my works have been published in popular magazines, and others aro> now in the hands of publishing houses. " I have long been interested by the possibility that the personality of the man who so generously gave his blood to save my life may be exerting a strange influence on invself, and I have endeavoured to find out more about him. But the hospital authorities will not reveal his identity, and all I have been able to learn is that he was a young medical student at the hospital and that he has since died."