A useful preservative for whole blood / A.H. Baker.

  • Baker, A. H.
Date:
[1925?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A useful preservative for whole blood / A.H. Baker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/6 (page 201)
    A USEFUL PRESERVATIVE FOR WHOLE BLOOD. A. H. BAKER, Assistant, IVHlcome Physiological Research Laboratories, Beckenham, Kent. Received for publication June 26th, 1925. In connection with investigations into poultry diseases, it was necessary to test fowls’ blood for agglutination to 1B.pullorum, which is the causal organism of bacillary white diarrhoea in chickens. Sterile tubes were sent to poultry- keepers, in which samples of blood from the suspected hens would be returned to the laboratory. The blood is taken by making a small cut in the wmg vein and allowing the drops of blood to run across the feathers and into the tube. The weather was warm, and the blood samples received at the laboratory were in many cases putrid and useless for test. Mr. Dalling, the Head of the Veterinary Department, asked me to try the effect of various antiseptics, and mercury biniodide and formalin from 1/400 to 1/1000 were tried. The biniodide caused haemolysis in the tubes and did not restrain the growth of contaminating organisms. In the tubes of blood containing formalin no satisfactory separation of serum took place. Both these proved unsuitable. Boric acid was next tried at dilutions varying from 1/100 to 1/500. In all the tubes containing fowls’ blood (which had during bleeding come into contact with the feathers) and the given dilution of boric acid, the separation of serum overnight was good ; no haemolysis occurred until the fourth day or later. No cloudiness due to the growth of contaminating organisms was visible until the sixth or eighth day, and the agglutinating titre for B. pullorum remained constant during six days after which the experiment was concluded. The small tubes, which contain when full about 2 5 c.c. of blood, are sent out containing each 0T c.c. of a 5 per cent, solution of boiic acid in saline