Circulating basophilic leucocyte counts in the newborn.

Recent evidence that histamine is present in basophilic kucocytes (Graham, Wheelwright, Parish, Marks and Lowry, 1952; Code and Mitchell, 1954) as well as in tissue mast cells (Riley and West, 1953) has created fresh interest in these cells. Knowledge of variations in the number of crulating basophils is scanty owing to the inaccuracy of smear techniques, but the introduction of a chamber-counting method (Moore and James, 1953) has made it possible to measure even small changes with considerable accuracy. Using this method, basophils have been counted in the capillary blood of healthy infants during the newborn period.