THE MODERN BLOOD TESTS BEFORE 

 TRANSFUSION* 



REUBEN OTTENBERG and D. J. KALISKI 

 (Pathological Laboratory of Mount Sinai Hospital, New York.) 



Transfusion, when first introduced two centurles ago, and agaln 

 when revived in the middle of the last Century, had to be given up 

 because of the occasional occurrence of certain unf oreseen accidents. 

 The better understanding of physiological principles led first to the 

 abandonment of transfusion from lower animals into man, and then 

 to the abandonment of indirect transfusion (injection of defibrinated 

 blood). 



The revival of direct transfusion in recent years is the immediate 

 result of improvements in blood-vessel surgery. The success of 

 modern transfusion, however, in the future, will probably depend 

 largely on rather recently acquired knowledge of certain normal 

 and abnormal qualities of the blood. 



While it has been known ever since Landois' fundamental ex- 

 periments that the blood of one species of animal is not indifferent 

 to, but usually exerts a direct toxic action on, the blood of another 

 species, it is only in recent years that we have learned that the 

 blood is not always indifferent to the blood of other animals of the 

 same species. Two kinds of phenomena may occur under certain 

 circumstances, when such bloods are mixed : hemolysis and aggluti- 

 nation. The former, so far as we know at present, only occurs 

 when one of these bloods is pathologically changed; the latter occurs 

 hetween many normal bloods. 



If blood toward which the patient's blood is hemolytic is used 



* Experimental work related to this subject has been in progress in the 

 Laboratory of Biological Chemistry of Columbia University, at the College of 

 Physicians and Surgeons, under the auspices of the George Crocker Special 

 Research Fund. See Ottenberg: Journal of Experimental Medicine, 191 1, xiii, 

 p. 425; Ottenberg and Friedman: Ibid., p. 531; Kahn and Ottenberg: Ibid., 

 P- 536. 



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