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SoaKiuQ tissues an& Sections of ^iseuee 



in Mater. 



By J. W. Plaxton (Kingston, Jamaica). 



HAS anyone but myself been led astray by this practice? 

 Or has anyone made use of it in the manner I should 

 be inclined to do if once more I were to have a class 

 to teach ? 



Soaking in water " for a night " or for " from twelve to 

 twenty-four hours " is enjoined as preliminary to embedding 

 spirit-hardened tissues in gum and before cutting sections. I do 

 not myself embed in gum or use a freezing microtome, but 

 usually embed in paraffin ; I have not, therefore, suffered by 

 soaking the tissue in bulk, but I have on two occasions left 

 sections in water overnight, and stained and mounted the fol- 

 lowing morning. 



In the first case I was engaged in searching for a possible 

 microphytic ferment in the edible arillus of the fruit of the Akee 

 {Cupania edulis), which, under ordinary circumstances, is most 

 nutritious, and a very good substitute indeed for Yorkshire pud- 

 ding; but, in this case under investigation, proving poisonous, 

 as it sometimes will, had literally exterminated a family : — five 

 human beings, their cat, and their dog. The sections in the 

 second instance were cut from the skin of a case of leprosy. 



Hundreds of the imsoaked sections of the Akee had shown 

 themselves absolutely sterile. The unsoaked sections of leprosy 

 had shown the bacilli of that disease most magnificently when 

 stained in magenta. When, however, I came to examine the 

 soaked sections of Akee, to my transitory astonishment bacteria 

 were numerous in them and beautifully displayed. In like 

 manner, my soaked sections of leprotic material, which I had, for- 

 tunately, stained in gentian violet, though they did not show a 

 single bacillus of leprosy stained, showed strange bacteria scat 

 tered through the sections in all the vivid beauty of poppies 



