Argyrophilia

Argyrophilia (from Latin argentum 'silver' and Greek philos 'friend') is the ability to dye fabrics through silver dyeing ("silvering") using an ammoniacal silver nitrate solution with subsequent reduction through formol or tannin . For example, argyrophilic fibers (= lattice fibers) and argyrophilic granules (of the argent-affine cells) can be stained. In contrast to this, molecules with an affinity for argenta bind more silver ions, which, however, do not have to be reduced to make them visible.

This property makes it possible to distinguish between reticular connective tissue (turns black) and collagenous connective tissue (turns brown), for example by means of silver plating , which is not possible with other colors.

literature

• Gerhard Hacker , Jiang Gu: Gold and Silver Staining: Techniques in Molecular Morphology . CRC, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4200-4023-4 .