16 PROTEIN THERAPY 



peutic effects of repeated bloodletting to biological alterations related 

 to protein therapy. 



BLOOD, SERUMS AND RELATED AGENTS 



Blood Transfusion. One of the very early methods of nonspecific 

 therapy involved the transfusion of whole blood from human or animal 

 sources; with the method a reaction on the part of the patient was a 

 common observation. It was this reaction that made the method 

 dangerous, because it could not be controlled and yet it seems to have 

 been recognized that in its occurrence lay the usefulness of the method 

 as a therapeutic measure. Hasse used sheep's blood in the treatment 

 of a large number of diseases (1874) and Eckert (1876) definitely rec- 

 ognized that the injected or transfused blood did not act as a substitute 

 but as a chemical irritant for the organism which had received the 

 injection. Bier made similar observations and while at times certain 

 clinical improvement followed these earlier attempts the methods 

 never came into prominence because of obvious limitations. In the 

 modern use of transfusion we are dealing only with the effort at sub- 

 stituting or making good a serious loss of serum or corpuscles and 

 every effort is made to avoid a reaction on the part of the recipient. 



Normal Human Serum. Auto serotherapy. The use of normal hu- 

 man serum, drawn from another individual or from the patient (auto- 

 serotherapy) for either subcutaneous or intravenous reinjection, is not 

 a new procedure. The use of normal serum in hemorrhagic diathesis 

 in particular has been in vogue a number of years. (Weil, 1908.) It 

 is probable that in the mechanism of clotting a colloidal rearrange- 

 ment of sufficient magnitude is brought about so that the serum be- 

 comes toxic for the homologous organism, and that it is this change 

 which accounts for the fact that the serum brings about a general 

 reaction. 



Serum when first defibrinated is decidedly toxic to the homologous 

 animal, a fact that should be kept in mind in judging the reaction elicited. 

 Freund in studying this question noted that when defibrinated blood was 

 injected in experimental animals within 15 minutes after drawing the 

 same, death followed very promptly; if a little more time elapsed the ani- 

 mal went into collapse; if injected within 30 minutes the animal reacted 

 with fever. From this time on the serum, up to 20 hours after preparation, 

 produced merely a very slight febrile disturbance. 



In recent years a number of interesting papers have been published deal- 

 ing with the injection of homologous serum, especially in the hemorrhagic 

 diseases. In the American literature, too, the method is very favorably 

 reported (Freeman, Huber, MacFarlane, Kaiser, Sophian, Hartmann, 

 Belliboni, Eosenberger, LeClainche and Vallee, Jousset, Mosti, Rosier, 

 etc.) 



In using autoserotherapy blood is drawn from a vein of the pa- 

 tie^ and this is permitted to clot or may be defibrinated. The 



