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Abstract
Careful research by numerous investigators has shown the thymus to be a producer of lymphocytes and myelocytes (and possibly also erythrocytes) which reach the circulation via the veins and lymphatics. It is therefore no longer necessary to consider the thymus as an enigmatic organ—an organ of unknown function—when its hematopoietic role is apparent. Likewise, it is sheer folly to go on believing that the thymus is merely an organ of infancy and childhood after it has been pointed out repeatedly by numerous workers in the field that this view is incorrect. One must have a moving dynamic concept of the organ as it is capable of swift and extensive changes in form and structure which take place under physiologic conditions chiefly by an unloading of its cortical cells into the vascular system and by the production of more to augment and replace them. The thymus plays a far more important role in the genesis and perpetuation of leukemia than has hitherto been believed. The old but erroneous ideas about the immigration of cells into the thymus have led previous investigators astray in the interpretation of the histologic pictures presented in the thymus in both normal conditions and in leukemia. Leukocytes seen in the periphery of the lobules and in the interlobular septa have almost invariably been described as entering or "infiltrating" the thymus without any basis in fact; actually the cells are formed in the thymus and are migrating from it. The ultimate function of the thymus will not be clarified until the role of these leukocytes it produces—its chemical messengers—has been completely elucidated.

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