Everybody's Seeing Kelly

The town of Argos, Ind. is small (pop. 1,190) but it is way ahead of most places in the matter of blood banks. Dr. Frank Hetherington Kelly, bespectacled head of the local ten-bed hospital, is fast getting the whole town of Argos to contribute to the bank. And he has a slick dodge all his own.

After testing a sample of blood, Dr. Kelly records the blood type right on the donor's body. With a vibrating tool he injects dots of a special oil-and-pigment mixture into the skin--a process not as painful but just as permanent as tattooing. Dr. Kelly calls it tatyping. One dot means the man's blood is type AB, two dots mean type B, etc.

Dr. Kelly believes that his system, in general use, could save many lives by saving time. A country doctor, for instance, is often at a loss when whole blood is needed, unless he is near a big hospital with a big stock. (Unlike plasma, which can be used universally, whole blood used in a transfusion must match a recipient's blood type.) But if the whole township were tatyped, the doctor could find 50 suitable donors in a few seconds merely by flipping through a card index.

Since the North African victory, some blood donors are failing to keep appointments at Red Cross donor centers. The Red Cross has noticed that such defaults always increase after good news.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.