The collection of Formule here brought together is, I    se?
believe, practically exhaustive; no process having any      abode
claim to scientific status having been rejected, nor any,  ph
I trust, unwittingly omitted. It may be useful here to      Maqro
say a word as to the reasons for this-perhaps apparently
excessive-catholicity of treatment. Doubtless a large
proportion of the formul. given are quite superseded in
modern practice; but that is not a sufficient reason for
rejecting them. The inclusion of all of them is justified
by the consideration that some one or other of them may
perhaps serve, in some way that cannot now be foreseen,
to suggest some new method of value. Let me give an
example. Who, ten years ago, would have thought that
the formula of Blanchard's 'Liqueur saline hydrargy-
rique' deserved reprinting in a treatise on histologic
technic ? Yet it is to the disinterment of that forgotten
formula by Lang that we owe the establishment of
corrosive sublimate as one of the most useful fixing agents
in the arsenal of the microtomist. Or who would have
deemed Thiersch's lilac borax-carmine (Formula No. 80a),
published in 1865, to be of greater importance than any
other stain till then made known ? Yet that formula it
was that directly suggested Woodward's admirable
aqueous borax-carmine, and through this, if I am not
mistaken, the aqueous and the alcoholic borax-carmines
of Grenacher, the latter of which is now to be found on
the table of every embryologist.
All my abstracts and translations have been made from
the original sources, except where it has been impossible
for me to obtain sight of these. References to the sources
~g

Vi

PREFACE


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