Excerpt from Southern Medicine and Surgery, Vol. 100: Lineal Descendant of the North Carolina Medical Journal; January, 1938 According to reports placental extract (immune Globulin. Lederle) has given excellent results when used in the same way and for the same purposes as convalescent serum. It seems just as positive in effect as convalescent serum and has the distinct advantage of being available at all times. Placental extract is prepared by pooling a large number of placentas from healthy women, grinding, extracting with normal saline, precipitating the globulin with ammonium sulphate, redissolving the precipitate in normal saline and filtering through a Berkefeld filter for sterilizing. The dose is the same as the dose of convalescent serum. Normal serum may be used if neither of the first two preparations can be obtained, but not as much can be expected from its use. The dose is larger than that for either convalescent serum or placental extract. The amount can be determined by the factor, age times 4 (age X Thus a patient four years old would get 16 cc. Whole blood may be used if it isn't possible to use any of the three above-mentioned products. It is least desirable because, in addition to being less effective, there is more danger of infection and it produces a large hematoma. The dose in c.c.'s is arrived at by the factor, age times 4. The form of measles resulting from the controlled use of these products is known as modified measles and this is the advantage in their use. Modified measles shows a prolonged incubation period, mild catarrhal symptoms, faint rash, low fever and little desquamation. Complications - pneumonia, otitis media, etc., the real danger and the causes of most measles deaths - are rare. The immunity con ferred after modified measles is as full and com plete as that following unaltered measles with the distinct advantage that the dangerous complica tions are avoided. Therefore it seems a sensible thing to administer convalescent serum or placental extract for the specific purpose of modifying the disease in children over five years of age or in adults. Their use as preventives should be limited to children under five years of age and dehili taled persons of any age. The immunity resulting from their prophylactic use lasts only about one to two months. It is passive in type and like all passive immunity it is of short duration. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.