JAMA: What will hematology be like in the future? Jacob: First you have to look at its past. Fifty years ago hematology was a morphological specialty. Then, biochemistry crept in; the real beginning was the elucidation of the enzymatic defect in glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, opening up study of RBC biochemistry. Soon the biochemistry of hemoglobin and of the RBC enzyme machinery was actively studied, and these areas have certainly advanced dramatically in the last 15 years. The RBC, being an easily studied cell, found more general use, as well, in work in membrane biochemistry. In the past, the inflammatory cells, including lymphocytes and phagocytes such as granulocytes and monocytes, were the exclusive province of workers in immunology and infectious disease, but in the last ten years, a number of hematologists, including our own group, have been interested in the physiology of the inflammatory cell. This is reflected in our