Well John, I have to say that I am amazed.
How can a thin section take up as much stain in total as a thick section?
Are you telling me that the current trend in thin semi-stained sections is anything else but a function of the thinness of the section?
Is it a total coincidence that slides with chatters have dense and light areas coinciding with the thick and thin parts?
Come on!!

Terry L Marshall
Histopathologist
Rotherham General Hospital, Yorkshire

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000 WHudson436@aol.com wrote:

> For staining sections I know that it takes longer to stain thin sections 
> than thick sections.

How did you come by this idea? It certainly isn't a general 
rule. For most methods you need longer times for thicker sections.
This makes sense, because molecules of dyes, solvents etc take
longer to diffuse through a thick than through a thin slice of
tissue.

I'm trying to think of a method that needs longer times for thinner
sections but can't, unless the embedding medium is changed. Some
plastic embedding media, often preferred for really thin sections,
cannot be dissolved out before staining. The plastic retards
permeation of dyes etc, but nevertheless it takes longer to stain
a thick plastic section than a thin one. It could therefore take
longer to stain a thin plastic section than a thicker paraffin
or (unembedded) frozen section.

Are there some staining methods that take longer for thinner 
sections in the same embedding medium? 

 John A. Kiernan,
 Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology,
 The University of Western Ontario,
 LONDON,  Canada  N6A 5C1