Medicine B‑class Mid‑importance

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The use of the term 'thin section' is incorrect. In histology, a wide range of section thicknesses are used. For light microscopy, sections are often 1 or 2 microns. However, for transmission electron microscopy (TEM), sections of biological tissue are typically 60 nanometers thick (0.06 microns). To call a 1 micron thick sample in histology 'very thin' is not correct.

The above is misleading. 1um for paraffin sections is indeed 'very thin' and very difficult to obtain unless absolutely expert at the craft. You just have to understand the nature of the different modes of histological preparations. Tissue fopr electron microscopy is embedded in hard plastics that are very easy to section extremely thin. Paraffin is much softer and delicate and so harder to obtain "thin" sections.

I have removed the external link to www.visualhistology.com, as it appears to be spam. (Advertising for a DVD set.) --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 00:37, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hello, I just added a link to http://www.visualhistology.com/Visual_Histology_Atlas/ in the external links section. This is the complete online version of the classic Moran & Rowley Visual Histology Text Atlas, still in use in medical libraries, but out of print since 1988. On the site, we do have an option for people to visit the commercial portion of our website where we do sell histology tutorial DVDs. The online text is free for all Internet users and we believe substantially contributes to the overall knowledge base. We are able to do this because of the fact that we are commercially funded through sales of our product, so I hope the Wikipedia community sees the value in this information and keeps the link intact.

Secondarily, the glossary that was created with the Atlas is quite substantial and I wonder if it would make a good addition to Wikipedia? Please take a look at this link: http://www.visualhistology.com/Visual_Histology_Atlas/VHA_Glossary.html and let me know what you think. I would be happy to add the content to Wikipedia if it is appropriate but some guidance about where to put it would be appreciated. Thank you.

I've just created thin section, which is the commonly used term in optical mineralogy and petrology, where thin sections of rock are ground into sections for microscope work. I notice this article includes a detailed description of the preparation of tissue thin sections, and I wonder if it is worth either including a link, disambiguation or even some sort of partial merge of the material. So as a gauge, how widespread is the use of the actual words thin section in medicine? Jon 12:31, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the lab we use the term "thin sections" to refer to sections of 2 microns, occasionally a pathologist will request a thin section. We also cut "thick sections" when preparing tissue for a Congo red stain. Also we say "oh no my microtome is thick thinning!" this is when a fault in the microtome causes alternate thick thin sections to appear in the tissue ribbon. Its used as a desciption in the article, histotechnologists cut sections which happen to be thin. I would never say "I am heading off to the lab to prepare a thin section."

7 April 2006 S.Warwick Histotechnologist

Excellent, cheers for that, I will leave it as it is then  :-) Jon 14:51, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On this note, the article attempts to give some kind of Greek word etymology, but it doesn't actually tell the reader what the prefix means in Greek. I'd like to know actually. 74.99.19.249 00:17, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Section 4, Histological classification of animal tissues, would be much more valuable if the several tissue types were categorized into the four basic types, as the leading paragraph suggests can be done.

Histography is probably never going to be more than a stub or dictionary definition without repeating content from this page. I say copy the sentence here and redirect. --Selket ^Talk 11:47, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest this article need to be split into histology and microtomy. Also it's in bad need of a history section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uranium-junkie (talk • contribs) 05:39, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]