Museum Techniques and Practices in Histopathology: A Compendium

ABSTRACT

Medical Museums are institutions that store and exhibit objects of historical, scientific or conditions of great rarity that has a link to medicine or health. Medical museum specimens are used as a visual undergraduate and postgraduate teaching aid. This article is aimed at elucidating more on museum techniques and practices in Histopathology. In order to produce a permanent museum mount in histopathology, specimens are dealt with in the following order; Reception, preparation, fixation, restoration, preservation and presentation. Specimens in the older medical museums were mounted in glass jars which were originally cylindrical in shape. Special museum techniques reviewed in this study include maceration and calculi. There are a number of stains that are used to demonstrate the presence of normal or abnormal constituents in tissues to be mounted in a museum jars, examples of these stains are: iodine or Congo Red; Perl’s Prussian Blue; Sudan IV or Scarlet R and Alizarin Red S. There is still no substitute for well dissected and mounted specimens that can be used for medical exhibitions, examination vivas, lecture demonstrations as well as self-teaching aid for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in Histopathology.