A rapid method for estimation of the total leukocyte count.

I N THE EVENT of atomic warfare, those charged with the medical service will be confronted with large numbers of radiation victims. One problem will be to identify those whose radiation injury is severe enough to require medical care. Because of the large number of people involved and the primitive conditions in devastated areas, a relatively simple and rapid sorting procedure should be available. The leukocyte count is reported to be a fairly good index of the dose of atomic radiation received by experimental animals and total body x-irradiation received by man. For this reason the leukocyte count has been proposed as the best screening procedure presently available for the sorting of atomic casualties. However, when the cleaning and loading of pipets and counting chambers is considered, about ten mmutes of a technician’s time is required for each count. Under field conditions a short supply of pipets and chambers could lengthen the time required and would provide a further obstacle to rapid screening. With these considerations as a background, a simplified leukocyte counting procedure was sought. By eliminating the pipets and counting chamber from the white cell count, much time and money could be saved. However, our attempts to estimate the white cell counts from blood smears proved