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Previous Volume 331:1723-1724 December 22, 1994 Number 25 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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Edited by Alfred Cuschieri and Charles D. Forbes. 246 pp., illustrated. Boston, Blackwell Scientific, 1994. $125. ISBN 0-632-03314-2.

Some organs of the body, such as the appendix, are not essential for life. The spleen is also dispensable, but unlike the appendix it has important functions. A prominent activity of the spleen is to cull damaged, worn-out, or potentially dangerous cells from the blood. The multilayered filtration bed that surrounds the arterial vessels of the spleen, and the unhurried flow of blood through its veins, make it a superb cell sorter. The precision and specificity with which the spleen picks particles from the blood depend in large measure on macrophages, which are everywhere in the organ. Proteins on the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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