[Histonet] where's the eosin?

[Connie McManus]

This reminds me of a funny thing that happened here some time ago.  We
had a graduate student (studied toxicology) working for a summer while
he awaited Fall semester to begin.  I trained him to do all the
solutions preps and embedding, etc.  He did extremely well at everything
I taught him.  One day, the H&Es were all H and no E.  I thought
something was wrong with the autostainer, so I took them back to 95%,
back to eosin for 2 minutes and still no E.  I smelled the eosin and
guess what... no acetic acid.  I should have noticed the color, but it
just didn't register at the time. I asked the grad student if he added
acetic acid to the eosin.  He said no because it was such a small amount
he didn't think it mattered (I think the acetic acid bottle was empty
==> some effort to go fill it up).  I nearly died. I bit my lips till
they bled that day.

Anyway, acetic acid is the first thing I check with missing eosin.  Hope
this helps.

Connie McManus
Utah Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratory
Utah State University
Logan, UT
Phone:  435/797-1891
fax: 435/797-2805


-----Original Message-----
From: histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
[mailto:histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu] On Behalf Of Gudrun
Lang
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 10:34 AM
To: Histonetliste
Subject: [Histonet] where's the eosin?

Dear netters
We process the prostatatissue in makro-cassettes in double time of the
normal schedule in a VIP. NBF-70-80-96-100-Shell.sol-Paraffin total for
24 hours. The large sections are stained H&E by hand. (self-made Mayer's
haematox. 20 min; selfmade 2% Eosin with a few drops of glacial acetic
acid 8 min ).
Recently it happend for two times, that the tissue doesn't accept the
Eosin. The sections remained blue and had only a shade of red. Normally
our HE's are almost purple. Funny is, that in one case, the first slides
were stained a few days before and looked good. The following slides of
the same blocks remained blue without red.
Could anyone give me a hint? Thanks in advance.
Gudrun Lang

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