A Color Picture in a Medical Journal

I had finished my Master’s Degree thesis, at Washington University in Saint Louis, which was on histochemistry of the cochlea, and the most important finding was the presence of acid mucopolysaccharides in the vicinity of the distal ends of the internal and external cochlear hair cells following noise exposure.

Dr. Walter Covell, my advisor, and I went several times to the illustration department of the WUSL Medical School and tried all sorts of tricks and all types of filters. We could not show these findings in a black and white picture.

I asked Dr Covell if it would be possible to include a color picture.  He did not know, but told me that he had never seen a color picture in a Medical journal. The office of the Laryngoscope, which was edited by Dr. Theo Walsh, was next to Dr. Covell’s office at the McMillan Hospital, so we went there to check. They did not know, either, but they would check with the printers.

The printers said that it would be possible to print a separate page and insert it in the journal. And this is what was done.

Upper part of the first turn of a guinea pig cochlea, stained with colloidal iron and periodic acid-Schiff.


In this way we started a trend. I am not sure about other specialties, but the picture that you see here was the first color picture published in an otolaryngological journal. And it was soon followed by other color pictures in many different ENT journals.

Mangabeira-Albernaz PL. Histochemistry of the conective tissue of the cochlea. Laryngoscope. 1961; 71: 1-18.

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