[Histonet] history of H&E staining

[John Kiernan]

Gudrun, your question got me looking through more than a dozen older books, several more recent ones and various articles, but with no clear answer!
H&E wasn't a routine combination in 1902. Pathology and normal human histology textbooks in the 1950s show pictures that are clearly H&E but with the stain getting scarcely a mention, and this is also true of the most recent (1999) path text on my shelf. Forty-five alum-haematein mixtures were published between 1868 and 1951. Of these, a majority (26) were in the period 1882-1916 and these include the best-known ones: Delafield, Ehrlich, Mayer, Harris etc, but eosin alone was seldom the recommended counterstain before 1890. H&E has never been the "routine" stain outside the fields of human and veterinary histology and pathology.  Other staining combinations are preferred for invertebrates, protozoa, plants and bacteria.  My guess is that H&E gradually became "routine" for pathology in the period 1910-1930.  If someone has access to some non-technical textbooks from those decades they might be able to narrow down the dates.
I could go on and on, with references etc, but this reply may already be too long for Histonet.  John Kiernan.
= = =
________________________________
From: Gudrun Lang via Histonet <histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu>
Sent: May 20, 2023 8:46 AM
To: histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu <histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu>
Subject: [Histonet] history of H&E staining

Hi all!

Does anybody know, when the H&E stain became that dominant routine-stain in
the pathology labs?

It was introduced by Wissowzky 1876, but I am curious when our usual
histoprocess became worldwide standard.



Regards

Gudrun Lang

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