Alfred E. Fischer

Treatment of early measles with parental whole blood

Summary The etiological agent of measles is presumably a filtrable virus. The subsequent complications are presumably due to the presence of pathogenic bacteria. In an attempt to reduce the incidence of pulmonary complications and thus lower the mortality in children, sixtysix children under three years of age were injected subcutaneously with from 20 c.c. to 40 c.c. of adult blood during the pre-eruptive or early eruptive stages of measles. There was very little difference in the severity of the measles or in the incidence of pulmonary involvement, when these sixty-six children were compared with 758 children in the same age group who did not receive blood injections.