Winifred Ashby

"1. It is possible in mixtures of corpuscles of different groups to separate the corpuscles practically quantitatively by treating with a serum that agglutinates the corpuscles of one kind, leaving the others unagglutinated. 2. After a recipient has been transfused with blood of a group other than his own, specimens of his blood treated with a serum that will agglutinate his own corpuscles but not the transfused corpuscles show unagglutinated corpuscles in large numbers. 3. These unagglutinated corpuscles which appear in the recipien's blood after such a transfusion are the transfused corpuscles and their count is a quantitative indicator of the amount of transfused blood still in the recipient's circulation. 4. The life of the transfused corpuscle is long; it has been found to extend for 30 days and more. The beneficial results of transfusion are without doubt not due primarily to a stimulating effect on the bone marrow, but, it is reasonable to assume, to the functioning of the transfused blood corpuscles."

"In a previous publication I showed that the transfused red blood-corpuscle does not have a transitory existence in the body, but that it remains in the blood-stream for a considerable length of time. The method used to show this is dependent on the iso-agglutinins present in blood and is based on the fact (which demonstrated with in vitro mixtures of blood corpuscles) that corpuscles belonging to two different blood groups if mixed can be separated quantitatively from one another by treating with a serum that will differentially agglutinate the corpuscles of one kind, leaving the others free. This method applies equally well to in vivo mixtures; the transfused blood-corpuscles in a patient can be separated from. the recipient’s native corpuscles by differentially agglutinating the recipient’s corpuscles with appropriate serum, provided the donor and recipient are in different groups. This method is only applicable, of course, to cases in which patients belonging to (’s nomenclature) are transfused with Group IV blood, or in which patients belonging to Group I are transfused with Group II or Group III blood, but in these cases the history of the transfused blood can be followed readily."

"It was hoped that some light might be thrown on the length of life of normal blood corpuscles and the mechanism of their removal from the circulation by the study of the elimination of transfused blood, which it is possible to make when the transfused blood is of a group unlike that of the recipient. This study has brought to light two facts, first, that the length of time that transfused blood remains in the circulation varies greatly; and second, that the elimination is not a continuous process but takes place in more or less cyclic crises, so that the circulation seems to rest more heavily on this cyclic activity of the body than on the condition of the corpuscle."

"Evidence is presented to show that there is no toxin producing the in . Partial evidence is presented to show that the periods of active blood destruction which are seen as the exception in pernicious anemia cases during a series of transfusions are due to the activity of the blood-destroying organs of the body rather than to the intrinsic weakness of the pernicious anemia blood corpuscle. It is questionable whether blood destruction is as important a factor in producing the anemia of pernicious anemia as it is at present usually assumed to be."

"Ashby accurately measured the life span of s to be up to 110 days, contradicting the perceived convention of an erythrocytic life span of only 14-21 days. She was best known for developing the Ashby technique for determining red blood cell survival, but also contributed to the diagnosis of and studied in the brain. Ashby was also an amateur pianist and composer with numerous compositions published between 1955-1968."