STAINING NERVE FIBERS IN MOUNTED SECTIONS WITH ALCOHOLIC SILVER NITRATE SOLUTION

The procedures to be described have developed through experiments designed to test the effects of varying some of the many conditions involved in silver staining. The previous article 1 on staining nerve fibers in unmounted celloidin sections gave the technic from which the present method has evolved. The application of silver solutions to mounted sections with subsequent reduction of adsorbed or chemically combined silver salt is not new. Sand 2 embedded nerve tissue in paraffin after fixation in a strong solution of nitric acid in acetone and later impregnated the mounted sections. Malone 3 described a method for handling paraffin sections to produce a Cajal type of stain. Brandt and Kadanoff 4 investigated the effect of varying the time of impregnation and the concentration of the silver nitrate bath on sections from celloidin, paraffin and gelatin embedded material. They chose gelatin as best suited to the O. Schultze method. More