Word: dextran
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...more than three weeks and cannot be given on the battlefield, so doctors use plasma (the blood fluid from which the cells have been removed) for first aid. Plasma will keep for years. As an emergency treatment for shock, doctors use plasma "extenders" such as salt solution, gelatine or Dextran. None of these contains the complex chemicals found in plasma, and none would be used if there were enough plasma to go around...
...Blood plasma, the clear portion of human blood, is better. It contains protein molecules of a definite size and shape that keep it from leaking out of the blood vessels. An emergency plasma substitute needs some harmless substance with the same sort of molecules. Several such substances, including gelatin, Dextran (a complex sugarlike compound) and PVP (polyvinyl pyrrolidone), a synthetic made from acetylene, do the job to some extent, but none is both plentiful and entirely satisfactory. Okra for Shock. One new idea is an extract of the slippery vegetable, okra. Dr. Hiram B. Benjamin of Marquette Medical School, Milwaukee...
Professor Tiselius has not tried dextran on war casualties. (When plasma is available, it is, of course, the best thing to use.) He thinks dextran will eventually have wide use in civilian first-aid kits...
...newest substitute for blood plasma is made from beets. Dextran, reported last week by Professor Arne Tiselius of Sweden's Institute of Physical Chemistry, is a white, jellylike substance which results when the bacteria Leuconostoc mesenteroides lives in beet sugar (it has long been a plague of sugar factories because it clogs up the pipes...
Injected into a man's veins, purified dextran has plasma's ability to combat shock by maintaining the volume of blood in the veins. The dextran molecules are too large to leak out readily through capillary walls, and at the same time they attract water, hold it in the blood...