We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
12
'9
September, 1945
In Vienna Landsteiner made the next important discovery in 1900, when he reported that agglutination and hemolysis may even occur within the same species. One man's blood, he noted, may clot or dissolve that of another man. He also observed that in some cases there was no reaction: this made for a successful transfusion. To assure success, he learned, the blood of the donor and the recipient must be typed.
It took the rich opportunity for experiment offered by the first World War to bring two British doctors working in the Near East to the conclusion that the blood of all men and all races conforms to four different and easily discernible types. These variations, they found, have nothing to do with origins or skin color. They further substantiated the fact that in transfusions of whole Wood, all that is needed is that the blood types match. Once the types conform, men's blood is interchangeable. This fact was confirmed again and again in field hospitals on the Western front.
It was in a British field hospital where the next notable life-saving discovery was made by Professor O. H. Robinson of the University of Chicago, who was serving as a captain in the British Medical Corps.
Transfusions were helping to save men's lives on the battle field. The demand for blood was great. In a single day when he could have used
eighty pints a maximum of eight were available. And these had to be taken from other soldiers in the field.
He knew that civilians back home would gladly give blood donations but the problem was to get it ahead of time, store it and prevent it from clotting.
Sodium citrate, he knew, keeps blood fluid for a while — but not long enough to be shipped from collection points to far-flung field hospitals on the fighting fronts. To do that would take, at the least, a couple of days.
Finally he hit upon the idea of refrigeration, stof ing blood like milk in an ice box. This made it possible to store blood for a period of ten days and only in limited quantities — which meant that use would have to be confined to the most desperately wounded. This was still not practical enough although a Russian doctor, Scrgius Judin, perfected a method of recovering blood from bodies a fev hours after death. Also it was not enough because thousands of men who vcrc r.nly slightly wounded died of shock.
Following World War I, a number j of nations appointed medical commit j tecs to study shock and search out a ' treatment for it. It was found that in shock the respiration of a person is shallow — indicating asphyxiation. It I was found that in shock circulation is impaired — meaning the red blood corpuscles cannot move oxygen to the tissues. It was found that in shock