Blood Borrowers

Travis B. Smythe, 26, Thornton, Tex., oil refinery chemist, found the fumes of boiling benzine "rather pleasant," not realizing that they were attacking his spleen, causing him pernicious anemia, and hemorrhages of his mucous membranes. Blood has been oozing from his mouth, nostrils, intestines, bladder; and his organs for manufacturing new, replacement red blood cells have not been functioning properly. In Baylor Hospital, Dallas, Tex., last week he borrowed blood for the 42nd time in six months. With three arm veins already destroyed by repeated blood transfusions and realizing his futility, he said: "I'd be a quitter if I didn't fight to the last."

In Long Island (N. Y.) College Hospital, last week, Doris Stansky, 2, knew not why doctors linked her blood system to that of her father, Joseph Stansky, milk wagon driver, and pumped his blood into her. She was affected by general blood poison, caused by an injury (of un- known origin) to her left hand. A neighborhood doctor, summoned during the night, had said her pain was due to "a little rheumatism" and ordered applications of cold water. She is kept living by the blood transfusion and by a mechanism of tubes through which liquid nourishment is let seep directly into her veins. Normal feeding is impossible.