Since the development of the Gomori-Takamatsu technique for the histochemical demonstration of alkaline phosphatase activity, there have been many reports on the distribution of this enzyme in various organs and tissues. Much of this work has been done with animal tissues, but none of the previous publications has dealt specifically with the distribution of alkaline phosphatase in the skin.
The earliest reports on the distribution of alkaline phosphatase studied by histochemical methods were those by Gomori1 and by Takamatsu.2 Gomori studied tissues from various organs, including the skin, in man and in 9 species of animals—Rhesus monkey, dog, cat, rabbit, guinea pig, rat, ground hog, gopher, and hog. He noted variations in localization of alkaline phosphatase in the organs of the different species. As regards the skin, he stated only that the skin and its appendages had been found to be negative in all species except for occasional