Is it true the black doctor who invented blood plasma bled to death in front of a hospital because the white doctors refused to admit him? –Anonymous, Kansas City, Missouri
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Charles R. Drew was a black surgeon who pioneered techniques for preserving blood plasma that saved countless lives during World War II. Later he became medical director of Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. In 1950, while driving three other black doctors to a conference in Alabama, Drew fell asleep at the wheel. The car swerved and rolled over, breaking his neck and crushing his chest. According to legend, he desperately needed a blood transfusion, but doctors at a hospital in Burlington, North Carolina, refused to admit him, and he died.
Drew didn’t receive a transfusion because his injuries wouldn’t permit it. “He had a superior vena caval syndrome–blood was blocked getting back to his heart from his brain and upper extremities,” Ford said. “To give him a transfusion would have killed him sooner. Even the most heroic efforts couldn’t have saved him. I can truthfully say that no efforts were spared in the treatment of Dr. Drew, and, contrary to popular myth, the fact that he was a Negro did not in any way limit the care that was given to him.”
There are two approaches to deciding if a critter is sleeping: behavioral and electrophysiological. Behavioral means the thing looks and acts like it’s sleeping–it gets quiet, assumes a characteristic posture, etc. Electrophysiological means certain patterns show up on a brain-wave monitor. Insects exhibit behavioral sleep, as do fish, amphibians, and reptiles. But God only knows what happens electrophysiologically–bugs don’t have enough gray matter to hook the electrodes to. My guess is they’ve got the occasional brain cell firing, but dreams? Forget it.
