STUDIES IN ELECTRON MICROSCOPY OF BLOOD CELLS

T HE PURPOSE of this report is to give a summary, illustrated with electron micrographs, of our work on the electron microscopy of blood cells. As soon as an electron microscope suitable for biologic purposes had become available, and especially after the publication of the first results obtained in the study of viruses, many workers endeavored to study normal and pathologic cells with this apparatus. However, despite the great progress that is being made in the study of bacteria, viruses, and certain specialized tissue fibers, the advances which have taken place in the field of cytology have been few. The failure of cytologists to make more rapid progress in this work is due chiefly to the technical difficulties involved in this relatively new investigative approach. Today the electron microscopist is in a position not unlike that of the pioneer microscopists before the technics of sectioning and differential histologic staining were available. The lack of technical aids in electron microscopy is also com-plicated by the fact that, to date, we have been able to examine only a few special cells which must be at the same time small and thinly spread. Still, as is the cas