CULTURE OF HUMAN MARROW

Abstract

The simple method of culture of human marrow¹is well adapted for the evaluation of therapeutic agents. It permits determination of their effect on living human cells, of the toxic dose and of the minimum effective therapeutic dose, and accurate control of concentration. Sulfanilamide was chosen as the first drug to be studied because its use is relatively new,²its mode of action is not thoroughly understood,³and it has been suggested⁴that its action may be directly on blood cells rather than on bacteria alone. All experiments on which this article is based are with infections with the beta hemolytic streptococcus. This organism was chosen for study first because sulfanilamide has been shown to be an effective agent in human infections with this organism⁵and because it is one of the most important agents producing human disease. However, the same general type of experiments