In the past, stains and their components were routinely made by the laboratory. Commercially available, premade reagents were uncommon and expensive. So, as an economical way to perform H&Es, techs learned to make the stains as needed from dry powder dyes and associated reagents from other chemicals that were on hand in the lab. The challenge with this was ensuring that the quality of the stain was consistent. Different techs often followed recipes using their own individual approach. To promote stain quality consistency, making stains was typically left to one person. Given that there were also more techs in the laboratory, the time needed to prepare the staining solutions and reagents did not take away from the overall workload of the team.
