REACTIONS FOLLOWING TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD, WITH URINARY SUPPRESSION AND UREMIA

Abstract

INTRODUCTION For more than 250 years those who have attempted to restore health by the transference of blood from a normal to a diseased person have been keenly aware of certain attending dangers. As early as 1667, Jean Baptiste Denys described in vivid style¹ the outstanding features of the so-called hemolytic transfusion reaction, which until recently served as an inexplicable and insuperable barrier to the transfusion of blood. An understanding of the nature of the incompatibilities that are responsible for these frequently fatal reactions came only after the studies of Landsteiner² on hemagglutination in 1901; a simple method for determining compatibility grew out of the classifications of Jansky (1907) and Moss (1910). As a result of these discoveries, transfusion of blood became a popular therapeutic procedure at about the time of the World War; today, provided one has taken the necessary precautions in preliminary grouping and cross-agglutination tests, it is