CLINICAL USE OF BLOOD DERIVATIVES

Abstract

Physiologic reasoning underlies sound practice in all fields of medicine today. But physiology, in turn, is dependent on chemistry for insight into the fundamental nature of the phenomena of health and disease. The work of a distinguished company of clinicians and medical scientists over a long period of years has evolved our present state of knowledge of the multiple functions of the blood and of their dependence on the molecular properties of the specific proteins by which they are mediated. The development of blood derivatives stems logically from this concept that each function of the blood is due to one or more specific components. Great progress has been made in the decade since plasma first came into general clinical use as a derivative of blood in which its osmotic and certain of its nutritional properties could be preserved for use when separated from the more labile cells. Chemical and physical