Women's Health

Already we are saving newborn infants who are born with a trouble, caused by the much publicized Rh factor that is called erythryblastosis. This practically means that they do not have good red blood cells. They are jaundiced and have other troubles. The cause is now known and naturally young parents have been disturbed, especially when they think that their two types of blood might cause this difficulty in their baby’s blood.
It is not an easy matter to understand the different types of blood, and the Rh factor is an especially complicated part of the whole story. When the blood from different species of animals is mixed, one blood destroys the cells of the other. Thus attempts in the past to help men by putting in their veins the blood of sheep, for instance, have been worthless. When bloods from individuals of the same species have been mixed (man, of course, is the species that we are interested in), the results at times have been very bad.
Evidently there are substances in some bloods which are hostile to others. We speak of bloods as being of different types and we know that there are many types in humans. Hence before mixing two bloods it must be determined to what type each belongs. If they may be mixed with safety, they are said to be compatible.
Dr. Karl Landsteiner, of the Rockefeller Institute, was a leader in the study of these types. Some years ago he and Dr. Alexander S. Wiener were studying a blood reaction which sometimes makes trouble for the unborn or newborn child. In the course of their experiments they, with that mysteriously reasonable curiosity which guides geniuses, put the blood of a rhesus monkey into a rabbit. After several injections the rabbit’s blood developed a substance that, when injected into the monkey, would cause the latter’s blood to form in clumps and be destroyed. The same sad result would happen to 85 per cent of humans. Evidently the monkey and most humans had something in their blood which caused this reaction. Dr. Landsteiner as a great compliment to the rhesus monkey, which had been so helpful, called this substance the Rh factor. So everybody knows of the Rh factor but few know of the modest Dr. Landsteiner.
Those persons who have the factor are said to be Rh positive; those who do not are Rh negative. If a father is Rh positive, he usually transmits it to his child. Sometimes some of the child’s blood leaks through the placenta and into the mother’s blood. If she is Rh negative, she then forms some of the substance which reacts against the child’s blood. This substance is called an antibody and is a part of an elaborate system for protection against materials which might do harm. In this particular situation it is hard to see how it is anything but a nuisance and danger. When it gets back into the child, it attacks his blood. Usually with the first pregnancy it does not make serious trouble, but in subsequent pregnancies more antibodies may be formed with increased potency.
The fact is, though, that only in a small proportion of cases where there is an Rh positive father and an Rh negative mother does trouble arise. Not all positive fathers transmit the factor to their children; not always does the blood from the positive baby get into the mother; not always does a negative mother react. At one large hospital there have been about twenty-five cases of erythroblastosis in seven thousand deliveries. The other hazards of pregnancy are greater. As an experienced and wise physician connected with this hospital said: “This factor is nothing of recent origin. It has always been with the race; and the dangers of childbirth, including this one, have certainly not increased. Quite the contrary, but the identity of this Rh menace has recently been established and dramatically publicized.” Infants severely injured by the Rh factor are now being saved by blood transfusions.
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WOMEN’S HEALTH