Abstract
In experiments carried out about fifteen years ago, one of us observed that during the regeneration of skin, the epithelial cells are able to penetrate into and to grow in coagula of blood and of blood plasma. 3 This suggested to him that it might be possible to make various tissues grow in culture media outside of the body, in the thermostat, as well as inside the body, in the latter case the body acting as a thermostat. Inasmuch as he noted that the epithelial and also connective tissue cells grew preferably in contact with solid structures as fibres of fibrin, and into solid gelatinous material rather than into fluids he attributed stereotropic sensitiveness to various tissue cells, and he consequently employed more or less solid culture media as agar and coagulated blood serum for his various experiments. At first he carried out experiments in vitro as well as experiments in which the animal body acted as an incubator. Lack of the necessary facilities made it very soon necessary for him to limit himself to the latter kinds of experiments. 1
To our knowledge in these our earlier experiments for the first time the attempt was recorded in the literature to grow tissues of higher animals under artificial conditions in environments that differ from those found in the body under natural conditions, to separate experimentally growing epithelial from connective tissue cells, and furthermore to study the influence of the addition of certain chemicals upon the growth of tissues. 2
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