SPECIAL REVIEWS

Abstract

This brief review of some of the recent accessions to our knowledge of the chemical structure, physiologic functions, and therapeutic applications of the plasma proteins serves to emphasize three important elements in medical progress—scientific curiosity, the humanitarian impulse, and effective social organization. We have had the privilege of summarizing the work of hundreds of investigators, whose studies are giving us new tools for the investigation and treatment of disease. Their work has only been possible because the magnificent response of a free people to the call for blood donors by a voluntary philanthropic agency, the American Red Cross, was coupled with a technical triumph, the development of practical methods for the large-scale separation of the plasma proteins, itself the culmination of highly theoretical and seemingly impractical investigations by protein chemists in various countries for many years.