Human Blood Relationships and Sterility

Abstract

IT is not, I think, generally known that the late Alphonse Milne-Edwards made curious and interesting investigations and suggestions with regard to these matters, but did not live to publish them. A record will be found in Sir Ray Lankester's “Secrets of Earth and Sea” (p. 141). Briefly, his view was that the serums of separated species are toxic to one another—as in the tables given by von Dungern and Hirschfeld and in this country by Back and Edwards, and thus prevent the fertilisation of the ovum of one species by the spermatozoon of another. “He proposed to inject one species by ‘serums’ extracted from the other, in such a way as seemed most likely to bring the chemical state of their reproductive elements into harmony, that is to say, into a condition in which they should not be actively antagonistic, but admit of fusion and union” (E. R. L.). I would suggest that the perplexing sterility of many normal, healthy young married couples is closely linked up with this question, and it may be that a great future is in store for the surgeon who would boldly adopt the suggestion of Milne-Edwards with the view of harmonising the serums of married persons whose relative sterility would appear to be capable of tabulation after the manner of the haemolytic charts given by Back and Edwards and by the writer of the article in NATURE of December 2.