FOREWORD 



DURING the past few years the so-called 'mast cells' have very rapidly 

 acquired a new interest for the interpretation of phenomena and the 

 solution of problems which have been much longer familiar to students 

 of physiology and pathology. The initiative and the effective stimulus to the 

 studies from which this new interest has arisen can be attributed to the original 

 work carried out and published in a succession of papers by Dr. Riley, with 

 Dr. G. B. West and his other colleagues. The publication of this Monograph 

 by Dr. Riley, assembling and presenting for discussion all this new and highly 

 suggestive evidence, will certainly be widely welcomed, not only by those who 

 are themselves active in related fields of research, but also by the many others 

 who may well have found it difficult to follow the rapid unfolding of knowledge 

 about these cells, and especially its recent and rapid development. 



As Dr. Riley duly records, we owe the first differential recognition of the 

 mast cells to the late Paul Ehrlich, whose pioneer publication on the subject 

 gave evidence, indeed, of the early ripening of his remarkable genius; for the 

 paper which first described and named these cells, characterized by the packing 

 of their cytoplasm with large, basophile granules, had been Ehrlich's graduation 

 Thesis. I find myself less clearly convinced than Dr. Riley seems to be, with 

 regard to the appropriateness of the name, ' Mastzellen ' (=fodder cells, or cells 

 concerned with fattening, or nutrition), as proposed by the young Ehrlich to 

 indicate the function which he attributed to these cells, but for which, in fact, 

 he had no evidence but their histological appearance, including the basophile 

 staining of their granules by which he recognized them. A short name, how- 

 ever, is obviously needed for convenient reference. In its English translation, 

 'mast cells' has practically no such functional implication as the original 

 German form had; and, in any case, a proper respect for priority and for 

 Ehrlich's memory would make us retain the name which he proposed, and 

 which has passed into such general use. 



Dr. Riley's attention appears to have been first drawn to the functional 

 possibilities of the mast cells, by the observation of their unusual abundance 

 in the tissues adjacent to experimentally induced cancers of the skin in mice. 

 Later he became acquainted with the results obtained by Jorpes and other 

 Scandinavian workers, who had observed a significant correspondence between 

 a special abundance of these cells in different tissues and the respective yields 

 obtainable from them of the anticoagulant principle known as 'heparin'. This 

 had been so named by its discoverer, W. H. Howell, on account of his original 

 finding of it in extracts from the liver of the dog — an organ in which the mast 



