On Fri, 11 Jan 1980, Gayle Callis wrote:

> ... dark ages, we always fixed smears for Gram stain
> using heat, flamed the back of the slide in order to
> fix the bacteria ...

  As 5th-year medical students in 1964-65 we enthusiastically
  fought the Good Fight, sadistically slow-cooking the
  Enemy on a slide and humanely incinerating their colonies
  on a platinum wire loop in the flame of a Bunsen.

  Medical students these days get no such heady delights
  as part of their education. Unless they pay extra in fees
  to be sent to Darkest Africa for 3 weeks, they don't even
  find out how to test for protein in urine by boiling it in
  a test tube, adding some acetic acid and holding the tube
  up in front of a dark background. I could go on & on, but
  won't.

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