John Kiernan points out the inadequate proportion of alcohol in Davidson's
fixative, compared to other less pronounceable fixatives containing different
proportions of the same ingredients.

At the present time about the only use I make of Davidson's fixative is for
opacifying lymph nodes and partly clearing fat in the mesenteries of colon
resection specimens. I wonder what the optimal proportion of alcohol,
formaldehyde, and acetic acid is for this particular purpose. - Finding very
small lymph nodes with metastatic colon cancer, once an academic exercise,
has become of great practical importance, since upstaging the colon cancer by
finding positive lymph nodes commits the patient to adjuvant chemotherapy,
with apparently a significantly increased chance of cure. I feel obligated to
do this time-consuming procedure as well as possible. Service to the patient,
that's the game.

I wish I weren't the only working surgical pathologist on this list! - My
colleagues (and perhaps me) certainly come in for their share of lumps.

In the course of pursuing Dr. Tellyesniczky, Alexander Nader (in Austria)
found me the text of Radnoti Miklos' poem "Levél a hitveshez" in adjacent
Hungary. Now if he can just find me the English translation that was
published in "Poetry" about ten years ago....

Every year I present a week-long workshop on reading poetry, at a religious
convention my wife introduced me to a number of years ago (the annual
Gathering of Friends General Conference [that's Quakers]. Last year a
Hungarian woman participated in my workshop, and brought this poem. Born in
1909, Radnoti Miklos (Radnoti is his last name, written first Hungarian
style) was murdered by the Nazis in November 1944. The poem is a letter to
his wife. - She read the poem, in its native language and in her English
translation, almost in tears, in one of the most moving readings I've ever
experienced in my workshop.

Web page for this workshop (not updated for this year yet) at
http://members.aol.com/RSRICHMOND/workshop.html

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Knoxville, Tennessee USA