434 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



developed by the United States National Eesearch Council, and within 

 a few months whole blood was being flown in enormous quantities to 

 Europe as well as to all the outposts of our Pacific theater, as it is 

 now being flown to Korea. So effective is this service that blood drawn 

 on the west coast was delivered in refrigerated containers less than 

 48 hours later at points such as Leyte, and at the end of the war it 

 was quickly reaching Seoul and other points in the Korean theater. 



As a result of these investigations on blood and its fractions, the 

 civilian surgeon has an imposing array of blood substitutes ready for 

 his use at any time, and he is able to count on a supply of stored whole 

 blood rather than having to find a blood donor at the scene of an acci- 

 dent or at some outpost of civilization. He has also come to depend 

 on two other significant blood fractions, namely, fibrin and thrombin, 

 which, thanks to the work of Edwin Cohn, Franc Ingraham, and 

 others, are available in pure form, and in combination can be used to 

 stop the most stubborn hemorrhage, e. g., bleeding from the brain 

 substance or the liver, which is notoriously difficult to arrest. A more 

 homely use of the fibrin-thrombin combination is for stopping a nose- 

 bleed or the hemorrhage that so often follows tooth extraction. 



Important new branches of medicine, important to the armed forces 

 and to civilians alike, have been created by wartime necessity. Al- 

 though no word has yet been coined to cover the great new area of 

 chemical applications in disease control, i. e., insect repellents, insecti- 

 cides, and antimalarials, which are now numerous because of our 

 attempts to make military operations possible in tropical regions, this 

 special field presents itself as a new and discrete branch of medicine and 

 should be so recognized. Just as Maj. Walter Reed and Gen. William 

 C. Gorgas made possible the building of the Panama Canal through 

 control of yellow fever, so the repellents (against insect and shark) 

 and the new insecticides made possible operations in the South Pacific 

 in World War II that otherwise would have been too costl}^ to con- 

 template. Other new and significant branches that have developed 

 are aviation and submarine medicine. 



AVIATION MEDICINE 



Oxygen administration. — Progress in aviation, stimulated by devel- 

 opments in military aircraft, has led to many advances of outstanding 

 value both for medical defense and for civilian aviation.^^ One of 



" HofP, E. C, and Fulton, J. F., A bibliography of aviation medicine, Spring- 

 field, III., 1942. Hoff, P. M. ; Hoff, B. C. ; and Fulton, J. F., A bibliography of 

 aviation medicine : Supplement, Springfield, 111., 1944. Fulton, J. F. ; Hoff, P. M. ; 

 and Perkins, H. T., A bibliography of visual literature, 1939-1944, Washington, 

 D. C, 1945. 



