Medicine: Jelly Blood

Doctors, who are always interested in substitutes for the materials of life, last week thought they had found one for blood in transfusions. The substitute was no good in cases where red cells are needed, but where the object was primarily to maintain the pressure and volume of body liquids.

In Annals of Surgery, a group of Detroit scientists described their blood substitute, which is cheap, plentiful, harmless—and comes from the kitchen. The substance: pectin—a whitish, grainy carbohydrate, made from grapefruit, lemons or other fruit. Housewives use pectin to put jell into jellies; surgeons sometimes use it externally as a wound healer.

At the Henry Ford Hospital Dr. Frank Wilbur Hartman and colleagues dissolved pectin in warm double-distilled water, filtered it through fine papers till it had the same thickness as blood serum. After injecting this liquid pectin into a number of guinea pigs, rabbits and dogs with no ill effects, they transfused it into the veins of eight patients. Results: “the bleeding time, coagulation time . . . were not altered. . . . Satisfactory blood pressure levels were maintained throughout. . . . Pectin is retained in the body a short time and then eliminated.”