Medicine: Blood Clotter

Last week in Science, Physiological Chemist Walter Henry Seegers and associates* of Iowa State University, announced they had prepared from beef blood a powerful concentrate of thrombin, the enzyme responsible for natural clotting of blood. While operating on the livers, bones and brains of animals they used an atomizer to spray thrombin on the wounds.

It sealed the finer blood vessels, checked hemorrhages in five to ten seconds. As soon as the discoverers are positive that they can sterilize thrombin and not destroy its potency, they expect to try it on human bleeders.

* Pathologists Emory Dean Warner, Kenneth Merle Brinkhous, Harry Pratt Smith.