Medicine: Nosebleeds

A punched nose will usually stop bleeding if it is held between thumb and finger for a few moments, if cold water is sloshed into the face, if something cold is pressed against the back of the neck.

A more persistent nosebleed will usually yield, if the patient half reclines, keeps still, has cold cloths applied to his forehead. A wad of gauze may also be stuffed into the bleeding nostril.

There are, however, people who continue to bleed at the nose despite all procedures and medication. The bleeding is a lifelong habit with them. A cold or a cough is enough to start their noses running blood. The epistaxis goes on for hours, days.

Two such persistent nosebleeders were Drs. Simon Back and Harry Lawrence Jaffe. Until they became internes in Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital they bled practically every day. At Mount Sinai Hospital they encountered Dr. Samuel Mortimor Peck who was experimenting with the venom of deadly water moccasins. Moccasin venom contains an element, Dr. Peck had found, which dissolves the lining of capillaries which then permit blood to escape hemorrhagically. The same venom contains another converse element which toughens the walls of capillaries and blocks any such hemorrhage.* Dr. Peck isolated the antihemorrhagic substance, tried its effects on some animals, offered to try it on his bleeding young colleagues. Drs. Dack and Jaffe consented, took highly diluted hypodermic injections of the substances. Within five months Drs. Dack & Jaffe ceased having their nosebleeds, Dr. Dack last week reported in the American Medical Association Journal.