Word: nigrosin
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...thing, they can detect an incipient case of measles by applying a blue black stain called nigrosin, which has a special affinity for measles virus, to a specimen of mucus from the nose or throat of anyone suffering from a sore throat. If he is coming down with measles, the virus can be seen under the microscope as dark dots...
Last week Dr. Jean Broadhurst, 64, tall, stately, silver-haired professor of bacteriology at Columbia University, announced in the Journal of Infectious Diseases that by-products of the measles virus, known as inclusion bodies, can be brought to sight by a blue-black stain called nigrosin which pathologists use to color and distinguish certain cells of the central nervous system from all other cells. No bacteriologist before Miss Broadhurst, who began her long career by teaching biology at New Jersey State Normal School, seems to have used nigrosin to stain, and therefore to see, these measles inclusion bodies...
...Nurses and doctors will no longer be forced to wait until a rash or fever appears before they know whether a sore throat signifies merely a cold or presages the measles. They will now be able to place a specimen of mucus from nose and throat stained by nigrosin under a microscope and tell in a moment whether or not the virus bodies that cause the measles are present. More important still, they will be able to detect carriers-people who carry the virus bodies about with them, infecting others, yet who are themselves immune to the disease...
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