Hello,

I'm emailing from Manchester in the UK and just starting my histology 
career.  Please can anyone help?

Just read some archived mail on Histonet regarding processing carnoy's 
fixed tissue - I really need some help with this, as we are getting strange 
black/brown nuclei throughout the tissue.  It has been suggested that this 
is the acid remaining in the nuclei.  We have a Leica carousel tissue 
processor without a vacuum, however, I have used an overnight 18 hours 
program and still can't get rid of this. We also use other fixatives which 
aren't a problem, but we would like to resolve the problem with carnoy's 
fixed tissue, as we use this fixative a lot in our lab and it is necessary 
for soem of our work.  Tissues are fixed for approx. 1 hour in Carnoy's and 
then transferred to 70% prior to processing.

I have also read on Histonet that there are 2 references regarding the 
processing of carnoy's fixed tissue, however, there aren't any abstracts on 
PubMed and I'm not sure whether our library holds this journal.  Does 
anyone know how I can get hold of them?  They are:-
Puchtler H et al  Histochemie 16:361-371, 1968
Puchtler H et al  Histochemie 21:97-116,	1970

If anyone has any other advice for dealing with these tissues, I would be 
very grateful if you could pass it on.

Kind regards,

Nicola Cragg
Epistem Ltd
Manchester, UK