Blood v. Measles

The Army & Navy can now prevent measles epidemics with a blood substance called gamma globulin. Last week this news spotlighted Harvard Medical School's unique Department of Physical Chemistry, where gamma-globulin extraction was perfected.

Gamma globulin is a blood protein. The solution the Army & Navy use is made from donations to the Red Cross blood bank. In tests it has prevented attacks of measles entirely or made them mild. One obvious use for gamma globulin: to prevent measles in children under two, for whom the disease is very dangerous.

Dr. Edwin Joseph Cohn, 51, has headed Harvard's Department of Physical Chemistry since it began (1920). He refuses to talk about himself, talks about his laboratory only in scientific journals in abstruse articles on the devious ways of blood. From the beginning, the laboratory's work has been too deep for most laymen, as near pure science as work on flesh & blood can be. In 1940 the National Research Council picked Dr. Cohn to find out whether beef plasma could substitute for human plasma in wartime transfusions. So far the answer is no, but in turning beef blood inside out, techniques were developed which led to the new ways of mining human blood for its useful components.

Since the war began, backed chiefly by the Navy, this busy laboratory has perfected the extraction of:

P:A stable preparation of serum albumin (TIME, Jan. 31), which is especially useful in shock. It is five times as powerful as plasma in drawing blood fluid back from the tissues into the blood stream. (Leakage of blood fluid into the tissues, with consequent reduction of blood volume and lowered blood pressure, are characteristics of shock.)

P:Fibrin film, fibrin foam and thrombin (TIME, March 20). Fibrin film is used as a substitute for brain covering ; fibrin foam and thrombin stop oozing blood.

P:Blood grouping globulins (also called isohemagglutinins) for use in blood typing. There are two kinds, one which reacts with type A blood, one with type B. They keep well and are used when a patient needs a transfusion of whole blood.

Seven commercial houses under Navy contract use Dr. Cohn's methods to extract serum albumin and other blood components. Since Dr. Cohn's laboratory does war work, the outside door is locked, the number of white-garbed assistants secret. So is most of the work being done within.

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