The comments on Verhoeff's hematoxylin should be sufficient to trouble-shoot this cumbersome but beautiful old stain - I don't know a stain I'd rather photograph, except maybe Ramón y Cajal's gold sublimate.
Verhoeff's hematoxylin is a century old this year. The original paper is in the JAMA, of all places - I think I had a photocopy once. (We need a commemorative postage stamp!) Frederick Herman Verhoeff (a.k.a. Freddy, 1874-1968 - I've always heard it pronounced veer-hoff) was the founder of American ophthalmologic pathology. Working solo in a little lab at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, he published a great number of papers in ophthalmology. He intended his stain to demonstrate myelin sheaths in human autopsy optic nerve. It was in routine use for this purpose at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins when I was a pathology resident there in the later 1960's, when Dick Green (died last year at 76) was the chief of eye pathology. Bob Richmond Samurai Pathologist Knoxville TN _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
