BLOOD TRANSFUSION

Hokitika Guardian, 29 April 1926, Page 4

BLOOD TRANSFUSION

OUR KINSHIP WITH THE APES.

(By J. B. S. Haldane, tho Biochemist in “Daily Mail.”)

It was Sir Christopher Wren, at that time a professor of astronomy, who invented not only the intravenous injection of drugs hut the transfusion of blood in the year 1659. His success on dogs, wrote Pepys in ltis diary, “did give occasion to many pretty wishes, as of the blood of a Quaker to be let into an Archbishop, and such like; but may, if it takes, be of mighty use to man’s healtTi, for the amending of bad blood by borrowing from a Letter body.”

In 1667, the year after the Great Fire of London, the experiment was tried before the Royal Society on Arthur Coga, a half-mad Cambridge graduate “that is poor and a debauched man, that the College have hired tor 20s to have some of the blood <f a sheep let into his body. Some ‘limit it may have a good effect on him as a frantic man by cooling his blood.'’ Air Coga survived to write an account of his ease in Latin, and claimed that- he felt a new man, hut Pepvs records that he continued ‘Tracked a little in the head.” *

WHEN TRANSFUSION WAS FATAL. As a matter of fact it is doubt lul whether he ran have received miic.i blood from the sheep, for subsequent attempts to transfer blood Horn an animal to man, or from one animal species to another, have generally proved harmful and often latal. And though transfusion was occasionally practised with conspicuous success l.mn alio human being into another, theie were times when the blood even ol a near relative acted as a deadly pM-un. It was not till this century that the reason for these fatalities was invesligated. It was found that very often the red corpuscles of the injected blood are treated in the same way ns bacteria to which u man is immune. Thev are first rendered sticky, or “agglutinated,” and then broken up by substances found in the blood serum of tlie recipient. Fortunately it is not necessary to inject blood in order to test its properties. If we mix a, drop of tho donor’s blood with a drop of serum from the recipient we can watch what happens with a microscope or even a good nunc, lens.

Later Jansky ami Moss showed that as regards these properties of the blood every human being lulls into one of four groups. As a general rule tho blood from a member of group 4 can safely be transfused into anyone, from group 3 only into groups 1 and 3, from group 2 only into groups 1 ami 2; while the blood of a member of group ] is poisonous to all except bis own group. Tims the unfortunate members of group 4, to which I belong, can lie called on to give blood to anyone, while the blood of most other people is poisonous to them. A TEST OF PATER NIT V. It was next shown that the group of ally individual is fixed I rum the moment of birth. Finally .1. R. I.earmonth, a. Glasgow medical student, obtained drops of blood from out-pa-tients and their families, and found that membership of a group is inherited in a very simple manner according to .Mendel's law. For example, if two parents belong to group 4 all their children belong to it also, while a parent in group 1 may have children of any group. There is no doubt i battil is knowledge will be used in the future in many eases ol disputed pa--1 entity. During the war Salonika was an ethnological museum. Besides the native Greeks, Jews, and Turks, there were British, French. Italians, Serbs, Russians, Arab, Negro, Anuamite, and Atadagasea rsoldiers, and German, Austrian and Bulgarian prisoners. 'Me brothers Hirzfchl, who were Polish medical officers in the Serbian Army, obtained samples of blood from some B.COO men and tested them. They found great differences between different races, and since then tests 1 nve been made all over the world with most interesing results. For example, groups 1 and 3 are hardly ever found among American Indians. In tlie Old World they are rarest in British and Belgians, and steadily increase as one passes towards India or Africa. The only coloured

I race whose groups are in European proportions are the Japanese. The proportions are not modilied by environ- 1 ment. They arc the same among pure-" I blooded Jews in Europe as among Arabs, among pure-blooded gipsies as ! among the natives of India, from which their ancestors came. So it is clear that a careful study of their distribution will throw new light on the c .'igin of the human races. HANV LIVES SAVED. While the tailed monkeys and lower animals do not til into the iiuncin groups, the tail-less apes, such as the orang and cb i mpa nzee, which -‘volutiomsts tell us arc our nearest animal relations, all belong to one or ‘he other of them. Blood transfusion was lirst practised on a large scale during the war. Since then it has been carried out in tens of thousands of cases. Not only can it be used to combat loss of blood from wounds, childbiilh. or operations, but it lias saved the lives of many newborn babies suffering from internal haemorrhages, and has at least staved olf death for several years in pernicious anaemia.

In this country we are still apt to regard blood donors as heroes, though most healthy men can give a quart of blood and return to work next day. But in the United Sates a more practical point of view prevails, and the professional blood donors have lornmd a trade union!