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Immunoglobulin injections may give short-term protection against, or reduce severity of certain diseases. They help people who have an inherited problem making their own antibodies, or those who are having certain types of cancer treatments.
When Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first mercury thermometer, he called "zero degrees" the lowest temperature he was able to attain with a mixture of ice and salt. For the upper point of his scale, he used 96°, which he measured as normal human body temperature (we know it to be 98.6° today because of more accurate thermometers).
Cancer has been around as long as humankind, but only in the second half of the twentieth century did the number of cancer cases explode.
When blood is exposed to air, it clots. Heparin allows the blood to come in direct contact with air without clotting.
Human kidneys will clean about 1 million gallons of blood in an average lifetime.