The control of vascular ooze has proved to be one of the most baffling problems in neurosurgery. Completely inappropriate for the ligature and equally outside the scope of the Cushing clip or the electrocautery, this type of hemorrhage responds to some extent to styptics, to pressure and to hot water, but all too frequent failures of these methods are attested by the guard under which patients must be kept after intracranial and intraspinal operations in order to signal the need of reexploration for removal of clot. To the problem of ooze must be added that of the bleeding of small vessels, especially arteries, when their destruction is likely to damage neighboring structures, and the bleeding from important veins whose function must be maintained following hemostasis.
Time and again the neurosurgeon has turned to the biochemist for an answer to these puzzles.1 The search has concerned the diversion of one