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The essay aims at bringing to light a minor but interesting chapter in the history of medicine between the 19th and the 20th centuries. The Italian G. Bizzozero and the German E. Neumann were enquiring into the function of the bone marrow as a haemopoietic organ, and were drawn into a fierce prioritiy dispute. Though Bizzozero's name is traditionally linked to the discovery of platelets, his investigation into the seedbed of blood corpuscles is also relevant in the context of the development of haematology. This scientific controversy also explains the complicated relations between the different elements of the blood, in normal and pathological states.