Histology: Who Knew It Would Be So Beautiful?

I spent yesterday morning hanging out with my friend L, and got the chance to sit in on a histology class. I had asked L beforehand why she wanted to take a class called Vertebrate Histology. She said because of the pretty colors. I laughed dismissively and said, "Really? Someone as brilliant as you wants to take a class because of pretty colors???"

I have to admit publicly I was 100% wrong. Not since I first came across fractals in my high school math class have I been so astonished and pleased by the aesthetics of a subject in a scientific field. Just like fractals, there was a psychedelic quality to the images. I was just plain blown away by the beauty of the slides I saw. Who knew a cross-section of the trachea would be so stunning? All that detail-- the hot pink of the epithelial cells lining the trachea, the brilliant blue of the basement membrane (that's the stain binding to the carbohydrates FYI). A cross-section of the eye was a close second as my favorite. The lens a hot pink orb, the cornea even thinner than L and I had imagined (you can see why cats get such nasty corneal ulcers, there isn't much there to start with).

By far our favorite stain was Mallory-Azan. L commented, "Mallory-Azan stain wins over everyone else for sheer aesthetics."

There are so many things I am grateful to my friend L for introducing me to-- too many to name. But I am especially grateful this week for her sharing her love of the microscope and introducing me to histology. Incredible.