Romanowsky staining, the Romanowsky effect and thoughts on the question of scientific priority

Abstract

I give an historical account and analysis of the scientific priority of the discovery of the polychrome staining of microscopic biological preparations provided by mixtures of eosin plus methylene blue and its derivatives, especially azure B. I maintain that both the formal priority for the discovery of the polychrome staining phenomenon and credit for initiating the development of a technique of polychrome staining properly belong to D. L. Romanowsky. His scientific work demonstrated the possibility of using a simple technique to stain hematological preparations selectively to give good contrast, high resolution and the ability to identify malaria parasites. Romanowsky’s approach constituted the starting point for the development of a family of polychrome stains for microscopic investigation of hematological preparations by a number of his contemporaries.

Key words:

• azure
• eosin
• Malachowski
• malaria parasite
• methylene blue
• Romanowsky
• Romanowsky effect
• Romanowsky stain

Acknowledgments

I thank the relatives of D. L. Romanowsky, especially his granddaughter, A. M. Kurko, and Prof. E. D. Sokolov, who provided considerable of material for the website and for this article. I am also grateful to the staff of the EMCO LLC for their support, as well as for the fact that they gave me the opportunity to work on this article.

Declaration of interest The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the paper.