Giving used paraffin off the processor to citrus farmers to use as 'smudge pots'. (Florida)
Making Harris Hematoxylin WITH Mercuric Oxide. (Chicago)
My nose vaguely remembers an iron stain that used ammonium sulfide. (Chicago)
Re-processing tissues that went one station too far in an old duo-technicon with DIOXANE. (Chicago)
Using Acetone and something called "Solvent 127" on the processor. . . (Soylent Green??)
Cutting routinely at 6 microns.
Going to the bowels of the hospital to look for paraffin blocks from 20 years ago - only to find they'd been eaten by rats or roaches. (California)
The histo 'lab' being INSIDE the morgue. (Memphis)
Jacqueline M. O'Connor HT(ASCP)
Abbott Laboratories
Global Pharmaceutical Research and Development
Discovery Chemotheraputics
847.938.4919
Fax 847.938.3266
"Cheasty, Sandra" <SCheasty@ahs.llumc.edu>
03/07/2003 10:49 AM
To: "HistoNet (E-mail)" <histonet@pathology.swmed.edu>
cc:
Subject: Histology-related "Older than Dirt"
I suppose some of these are still being carried out in histology labs...
* Hand-sharpening steel knives (and putting a curse on the pathologists who were careless in removing staples)
* Home-made Schiff's reagent (Is it "straw" colored yet? And how many bright pink lab floors are still in existence from accidents?)
* Smoking in the lab (when I first started working as a histo lab assistant in 1978, we had little ashtrays next to our microtomes)
* Practical jokes with sliver nitrate (today a cause for immediate dismissal and probably a lawsuit)
* Eating in the morgue (it WAS right next to the cafeteria)
* Changing the oil on the old technicon processor (remember when that stuff would start to smoke?)
* Pathologists doing lymph node dissections without gloves (OSHA-SHMOSHA!)
* Leaky cardboard containers for placentas
* Round metal cassettes with ill-fitting snap-on lids (you put a piece of paper with the case number in the cassette with the specimen)
* Throwing formalin and xylene (and everything else) down the drain (EPA-SCHMEPA!)
* Using old pathology reports for making note pads (HIPAA-SCHMIPAA)
I can hardly wait to see what other ancient practices have occurred...