8o 



Scientific Proceedings (72). 



Recognizing the difficulty of even approximate measurements 

 of physical and mental efforts during several days, it is evident 

 that only a large number of similar experiments are apt to reduce 

 the effect of accidental factors or of physiological fluctuations in 

 the motor efficiency of the gastro-intestinal tract. 



48 (1112) 



On the behavior of the mammalian ovary and especially of the 

 atretic follicle towards vital stains of the acid azo group. 



By Herbert M. Evans. 



[From the University of California, Berkeley, California.] 



I have given elsewhere 1 a description of those cells of the mam- 

 malian body which react so predominantly even if not in a wholly 

 specific way with vital dyes of the acid azo series as to justify their 

 recognition as a great functional unit or cell class. For the cells 

 in question it is suggested that we retain the old term macrophage, 

 which although proposed by Metchnikoff without the kind or the 

 complete extent of evidence now available for delimiting the class, 

 nevertheless puts in the foreground their salient structural and 

 functional peculiarity and has the further advantage of enabling 

 us to coordinate these studies with those long made by the com- 

 parative pathologist. 



It is worthy of note that in some of those cases of local tissue 

 degeneration and death which one must regard as physiological 

 or normal, the macrophages must, in analogy with the experience 

 of pathologists, be actively concerned. This above all is exem- 

 plified by the cyclic changes undergone by the mammalian ovary. 

 The strange cells which since the time of Pfliiger have been known 

 to be of assistance in atresia of the follicle and whose derivation 

 from granulosa or theca or from leucocytes, i. e., from practically 

 every available source, has in turn been championed — are picked 

 out by the azo dyes so brilliantly and so electively as to preclude 

 the denial of their alignment as typical macrophage cells 



There will be demonstrated a series of drawings of these 

 colonies of macrophages in the atretic follicle of the mouse, rat, 



1 Evans, H. M., "The Macrophages of Mammals," Am. Jour. Physiol., Vol. 37, 

 No. 2, May, 1913. 



