HISTORY OF INTRAMEDULLARY THERAPY
At least as far back as 1903 Wolff1 practiced marrow puncture on laboratory animals, and in 1910 Ghedini2 reported an experience of several years in obtaining specimens of bone marrow from 24 living human patients through puncture holes in the tibia. He recommended the method for the diagnosis of blood dyscrasias without pathognomonic alterations in the circulating blood and for the diagnosis of kala-azar. In 1923 Seyfarth,3 who had been seeking a substitute for splenic puncture in the diagnosis of kala-azar, described his use of a small hand trephine and a platinum wire loop for obtaining specimens of sternal marrow with the patient under local anesthesia. His discovery foreshadowed the observations of Debré and his associates4 that sternal puncture in man gives more frequent positive cultures for the diagnosis of septicemia than does venipuncture. In 1928 Sonnenfeld5 described a very small