PRIMARY CONGENITAL AND SECONDARY ACQUIRED SPLENIC PANHEMATOPENIA

I N the consideration of human health and disease, the spleen has now become of much greater interest pathologically than physiologically. This is a distinct reversal of the situation even of a few years ago. That the spleen is nonessential at any age to the maintenance of life and health is amply attested by experimental extirpation of that organ in many animal species, and by the accumulated experi-ence of emergency splenectomy for traumatic rupture of the normal human spleen.’ Most of the recent progress, therefore, in our understanding of this enigmatic organ has been made through an increasingly critical study of human disease syndromes. The inferences suggested by the available histologic and physiologic data have become magnified, thereby, into an increased awareness of the impor-tance of splenic pathology. Furthermore, if and when such pathology remains unrecognized in the human patient, chronic invalidism or acute, fatal hemoclastic crises may result. In the interest of simplification and clarity, a correlation of the currently ac-cepted knowledge relating to the spleen may be attempted diagrammatically (fig