2 FEBRUARY 1918, Page 3

The saving of life by the transfusion of blood from

a healthy person to the patient has often formed an incident of romances. A remarkable article in Wednesday's Pima shows laymen that modern surgery has rendered blood-transfusion a simple, harmless, and almost prosaic affair. The writer of the article had suffered from severe anaemia, and had been kept alive for eighteen months, and presumably cured, by forty transfusions. He emphas:z 36 the important fact that none of the men who gave him of their blood, a pint at a time, suffered any ill-effects. The healthy man apparenCy makes up the loss of a pint of blood in two days, and often benefits by the blood-letting. One man who gave his blood six times during last spring was able to return to his work after each operation, Ancient medicine was largely based on blood-letting, practised by the barber-surgeon, and there was, as we see, some foundation in fact for the principle, though it was doubtless carried to excess by many zealous practitioners.