A Selective Method for the Staining of Negri Bodies in Histological Brain Sections

Abstract

SEVERAL techniques have been devised for the demonstration of Negri bodies in histological preparations; but many of them, in my experience, proved to be sometimes capricious and not always reliable. Hitherto, in this laboratory routine examinations for rabies are carried out by staining sections of the hippocampus with a slightly modified Heidenhain's iron hæmatoxylin. This technique was found to be extremely reliable, and Negri bodies appear as blue-black well-defined structures, often containing black granules and vacuoles. However, as the whole background is greyish-black and red blood corpuscles, glial cells and leucocytes stain black also, some confusion may occasionally be encountered while differentiating Negri bodies. In view of this drawback, another method has been evolved, which gives very selective, durable and constant staining of Negri bodies.