Citrated Blood in Treatment of the Pneumonia Following Influenza

The early days of the epidemic with its fatal and clinically somewhat atypical pneumonia are far from pleasant memories. Any measure, therefore, that gave us a better chance to combat this infection was most opportune. McGuire and Redden¹treated thirty-seven pneumonia patients with thirty recoveries, six still under treatment and one death, by using the blood serum intravenously, taken from influenza patients that had recovered. They used from 300 to 700 c.c., as was indicated. This meant, of course, that large amounts of blood had to be taken from the donors, up to 800 c.c. of blood being withdrawn from one individual. They noticed that the serum appeared to vary in the amount of immune substance that it was supposed to contain. In fact, ten out of seventy serums clinically failed to demonstrate any evidence of this. Brown and Sweet²referred to the use of citrated blood in