Medicine: Pernicious Anemia

A treatment for pernicious anemia, devised by Drs. George R. Minot and William P. Murphy and applied by Dr. Walter W. Palmer of the Manhattan College of Physicians & Surgeons, has shown such good results at the Presbyterian Hospital, Manhattan, that doctors are telling each other of it. The treatment consists of feeding anemic patients a regulated diet of liver, kidneys and chicken gizzards. These foods contain iron and easily assimilated proteins which the victims need, but which their blood does not manufacture in sufficient quantity.

Pernicious anemia is one of those baffling diseases which irritate doctors because they can know so little about it. It is not the ordinary anemia which many girls experience. Nor is pernicious anemia that faintness that comes on with occasional loss of blood. In such cases the blood marrow of the bones immediately manufactures enough strong red blood cells to make up for the lost ones. In pernicious anemia, the patient may live two or three years, but hope for complete cure has heretofore been vain. Blood transfusions give only temporary relief.