CYTOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE BEHAVIOR OF 

 CHICKEN BONE MARROW IN PLASMA MEDIUM' 



RHODA ERDMANN 



Osborn Zoological Laboratory, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, and 



Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, Department of Animal 



Pathology, Princeton, Neiv Jersey 



TWO TEXT FIGURES AND NINE PLATES 



The writer, employing the bone marrow of the chicken for 

 attenuating the virus of cyanolophia (Erdmann '16^), by culture 

 of the marrow and the virus in a medium of chicken plasma, 

 has observed some interesting facts concerning the cytological 

 changes in the bone marrow cells. 



The morphology and development of chicken bone marrow 

 and its relation to blood formation have been described by few 

 authors. Dantschakoff ('09, pp. 859-65) gives an extensive 

 review of the literature on these questions and establishes our 

 knowledge of the origin of the different elements of chicken bone 

 marrow\ 



In studying the cells of bone marrow in plasma culture 

 medium, we must take into consideration the fact, that we add 

 to the plasma in which the tissue culture is cultivated a hetero- 

 geneous mixture of highly differentiated cells. Chicken bone 

 marrow has a loose framework of slender connective tissue 

 cells, in the meshes of which blood and fat cells are scattered. 

 The blood cells — eosinophils, erythrocytes, and myelocytes — 

 form, according to Foot ('13, p. 45) strands and circles between 

 and around the fat cells. The blood islands represent collec- 

 tions of cells of microlymphocytic and macrolymphocytic types, 

 of more or less ripe erythrocytes and of young connective tissue 

 cells. It must be clearly kept in mind that all these different 



^ Received for publication March 14, 1917. 



2 Erdmann, Rh. 1916 Attenuation of the living agents of cyanolophia, Pro- 

 ceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, vol. 8, pp. 

 189-193. 



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