<P> The method is named after its inventor , the Danish scientist Hans Christian Gram ( 1853 -- 1938 ) , who developed the technique while working with Carl Friedländer in the morgue of the city hospital in Berlin in 1884 . Gram devised his technique not for the purpose of distinguishing one type of bacterium from another but to make bacteria more visible in stained sections of lung tissue . He published his method in 1884 , and included in his short report the observation that the typhus bacillus did not retain the stain . </P>
what is the purpose of crystal violet used in the gram stain procedure
to make bacteria more visible in stained sections of lung tissue