The discovery of the Rhesus factor has elucidated the nature of haemolytic disease of the newborn. In recent years several other questions have arisen in regard to the haemolytic anaemias of childhood. The old controversy of the division between a congenital and an acquired form of haemolytic jaundice has been reopened by Loutit and Mollison (1946). These authors confirmed Widal's original idea that there are two different forms of haemolytic icterus: the familial form, in which abnormal red cells are rapidly destroyed by normal lytic processes; and the acquired form, in which normal cells are rapidly destroyed by abnormal lytic processes.
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