HYPOPHYSEAL MORPHOLOGY 



185 



delayed not so much by the difficulty of 

 distinguishing between them as by the dif- 

 ficulty of recognizing the basophil nature 

 of the different types in the species in 

 which the different types were highly dis- 

 tinctive. It is for this reason that the first 

 clear recognition of two types of basophil 

 cells came from the discovery of Romeis 

 (1940) that kresofuchsin applied to sections 

 of human pars distalis gave a differential 

 staining of the granules of cell types that 

 by the azan procedure were stained alike. 

 There seem to be four types of basophil 

 cells in the human pars distalis. Two of 

 them which Romeis did not consider suf- 

 ficiently distinctive to warrant separation 

 were designated by him as "/3-cells." The 

 other two types he designated as "y-cells" 

 and "8-cells." Kresofuchsin stained the 

 granules of both types of /?-cells and left the 

 granules of y-cells and 8-cells unstained. 

 The ^- and the 8-cells after azan stain- 

 ing were so much alike that a clear differ- 

 entiation between them could be obtained 

 only by the use of kresofuchsin, but the y- 

 cells were so distinctive that the use of 

 kresofuchsin to distinguish them from ft- 

 cells was not necessary. In this way kreso- 

 fuchsin acquired a reputation for distin- 

 guishing y8-cells from S-cells rather than for 

 distinguishing /3-cells from y-cells and 8- 

 cells. The premature assumption that only 

 two types of basophil cells would be present 

 in the pars distalis of man and the pars an- 

 terior of other mammals led to the wide- 

 spread use of the terms "^S" and "8" to desig- 

 nate cell types or cell groups in species 

 other than man, and thus set the stage for 

 an episode of nomenclatural confusion, the 

 results of which have been exacerbated by 

 a naive assumption that cell types desig- 

 nated by the same Greek letter by different 

 authors in different species ought to have 

 the same functions. 



The history of the use of elastic tissue 

 stains — kresofuchsin, resorcin-fuchsin, and 

 aldehyde-fuchsin — is interesting and shows 

 the difficulties that are experienced with the 

 use of these materials. Erdheim and Stumme 

 (1909) introduced the use of resorcin- 

 fuchsin as an elective stain for the gran- 

 ules of basophil cells in the human hypophy- 

 sis, and it appears among the staining 

 reactions listed l)v Bailev and Davidoff 



(1925) as characteristic of basophil cells. 

 The term ''/?" was proposed by these au- 

 thors to replace the term "basophil" which 

 they thought was too specific in meaning to 

 characterize a type of cell which could be 

 stained specifically in several ways, some 

 of which did not appear to involve baso- 

 philia. 



Berblinger and Burgdorf (1935), in a 

 study of connective tissue in the human 

 hypophysis, used the commercially avail- 

 able kresofuchsin as a stain for elastic tis- 

 sue, and counterstained with orange G — 

 phosphomolybdic acid and aniline blue. 

 They noticed in the pars distalis that, al- 

 though kresofuchin stained the granules of 

 some of the basophil cells, there were other 

 cells which did not differ in any visible re- 

 spect except that their granules were not 

 stained by kresofuchsin and were stained 

 only by the aniline blue. Thornton (personal 

 communication) and I too have observed 

 the same phenomenon with paraffin sections 

 of formalin-fixed human hypophyses stained 

 with aldehyde-fuchsin. According to the 

 age of the aldehyde-fuchsin solution and the 

 duration of staining, the granules of a 

 varying proportion of the basophils are 

 stained with aldehyde-fuchsin, whereas 

 others remain unstained in an erratic and 

 nonreproducible fashion that cannot pos- 

 sibly represent a distinction between differ- 

 ent functional cell types. Rodriguez (1937) 

 used Berblinger and Burgdorf's staining 

 combination in a study of the cells of the 

 anterior lobes of the hypophyses of a num- 

 ber of mammalian species. He found kreso- 

 fuchsin-stainable granulated cells in bovine, 

 horse, sheep, dog, monkey, and rabbit hy- 

 pophyses. He did not find such cells in the 

 guinea pig or rat, although there were in 

 these species cells with a diffuse staining. 



Using resorcin-fuchsin for the staining of 

 basophil cells, von Soos (1934) apparently 

 ol)tained results similar to those produced 

 by kresofuchsin. He found cells with re- 

 sorcin-funchsin stainable granules in nine 

 mammalian species but not in birds. In 

 most species the number of basophil cells 

 revealed by resorcin-fuchsin was similar to 

 the number shown by Mallory staining of 

 adjacent sections. 



At the time of the above-mentioned in- 

 vestigations, Romeis was using a combina- 



