PREFACE 



THE present edition of this work has been most thoroughly 

 revised, and has been brought up to date by the incorpora- 

 tion of all the new matter of any value that has appeared 

 since the publication of the second edition. 



Notwithstanding the very great pains that have been 

 taken in selecting matter for omission,* and in condensing 

 the text as far as practicable, the book turns out to be con- 

 siderably enlarged. The reason for this is that the last 

 three years have produced, together with the usual crop of 

 ignorant futilities, a large amount of really valuable new 

 matter, of which due account has been rendered. 



Amongst this new matter I would direct the reader's 

 attention to the thoroughly scientific and successful work 

 on the Theory of Staining with Carmine and with Haema- 

 toxylin, done by Paul Mayer, summarised in Chapters X 

 and XI, and to the new formulae for stains resulting there- 

 from. The results are eminently satisfactory, both theo- 

 retically and practically, and constitute the most brilliant 

 and solid contribution to this branch of the subject that has 

 been made since the publication, fourteen years ago, of 

 Grenacher's epoch-making alum-carmine and borax-carmine, 

 a feat that has not since been equalled. 



The Ehrlich-Biondi-Heidenhain staining mixture may also 

 be noticed as being in its way a most brilliantly successful 

 thing ; it has in the course of the last three years attained 

 an almost unexampled degree of popularity. 



As in the last edition, great extension has been given to 

 the subject of Neurological Methods, which now cover over 

 sixty pages, exclusive of the Methylen Blue method and 

 other impregnation methods discussed in Part I. This 



* The receipt for Beale's carmine has been rejected from the text. 

 Probably the older among my readers will note its disappearance with some 

 touch of emotion. Eheu, fugaces ! 



