Champion Donor

Three-year-old Rose Marie Ryan played with her dolls on the porch of her Philadelphia home. It was July 4, 1935, and some boys who were shooting off firecrackers happened by. A firecracker exploded almost in contact with Rose Marie's back. She ran screaming into her house, and the boys, terrified, ran away.

Rose Marie's favorite aunt, Mrs. Rose McMullin, who had raised her from infancy and regarded her as her own, rushed the child to a hospital, where the burn was dressed, anti-tetanus vaccine injected. But the burn did not heal properly. Within a month it was infected. Rose Marie's temperature shot up to a desperate 105DEG, then to a fantastic 107DEG. Her abdomen was swollen, her legs were like tight sausages. The doctors found her blood teeming with Staphylococcus aureus, golden pus germs which are deadly in the blood stream. They shook their heads, said they could do nothing unless a blood donor were found who had recovered from "staph" poisoning.

Mrs. McMullin sought solitude to pray, returned from her prayer with an idea. When they heard what it was, the medical men at first refused, finally consented. A vaccine of some of Rose Marie's poisoned blood was injected into Mrs. McMullin's blood, so that--if all went well --the woman's blood might manufacture antibodies which could be given back to the child. Mrs. McMullin over a period of days gave her niece 29 transfusions in all. Slowly, through a discouraging series of complications, Rose Marie recovered.

For Mrs. McMullin, this daring rescue was the beginning of a unique career. She had recovered from her own staph infection, just as she had recovered earlier in life from an attack of Streptococcus viridans, rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, carbuncles. Her blood was a treasure house of assorted antibodies, and she was no miser. In 1937 she heard of a boy named Billy Cartledge who was dying of staph poisoning in Delaware County, Pa. She rushed there and he pulled through. Jimmy Duffy's parents called Mrs. McMullin from a camping trip; Jimmy recovered too. So did Dr. Charles Zinck, a Chicago dentist, after Mrs. McMullin had flown from Akron through heavy storms.

Last week Mrs. McMullin went to Manhattan to give transfusions to Mrs. Jennie Costa, a young mother who developed inflammation of the heart lining, due to strep infection, after her baby was born. Mrs. Costa's doctor said the outlook was hopeful.

Mrs. McMullin plausibly regards herself as the champion woman blood donor of the U. S. She travels from town to town giving transfusions, answering a barrage of calls, often trying to decide which of several simultaneous pleas is the most urgent. She has given about 200 transfusions in all--100 (totaling 19 quarts of blood) since last December. In that time she gained 15 Ib. Once she gave 1,750 cubic centimetres (equivalent to three or four average transfusions) within 60 hours. She does not feel weak or headachy after bloodletting, has no finicky dietary rules. (But she craves celery, eats some with almost every meal.) She is plump and healthy-looking, except for rather pale cheeks. That she fixes with a bit of rouge.

The champion's husband, William Mc Mullin, is very proud of his wife, can recite her medical qualifications glibly, drives her on her mercy errands. An auto specialties salesman, he makes $40 or $50 a week. Although they ask patients for traveling expenses, Mrs. Mc Mullin claims she has never accepted a penny of direct payment for her blood. Says she, "I don't want to make money out of human misery."

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