A new technique for cross sectioning free hairs.

A new method of sectioning hair specimens has been devised that employs Araldite as an embedding medium. This has greater rigidity than paraffin and eliminates the possibility of compression on sectioning with resultant distortion of the hair shaft. Semithin sections could be sectioned at the perpendicular and examined with phase contrast optics. By correlating the cross section with the longitudinal position of the hair shaft within this translucent medium, exact cross sections of various hair types could be obtained.