The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1894-08-10
MICROTOMY A FINE ART.
Though the Microtomist is but Little
Known to Fame,

work, let him seek a medical student
possessed of a microscope. The same
will show him number of glass slips,
three inches long, perhaps, by three
quarter wide. These will be labelled:
One, Muscle;" another, 'Sciatic
Nerves" q third, ''Scalp of a Child"
and fourth, Cats LIVER Such
names do not lead one to anticipate
art and beauty, and this makes the art
and beauty all the more charming. In
the center of each of these slips, COW
cred by an extremely thin circular
disk of glass, he will see little slice
of matter, the size. perhaps, of the
head of tin tack or smaller. and so
thin as to be altogether transparent.
This is. let us say, your cats liver,
etherealized by the miorotomist. Un-
der the microscope it has the air of a
circular stained glass window; the
"cells" of the liver form an interlacing
tracery of golden pink, and the diverse
blood vessels, of which there are three
sorts. appear, if injected, as branching
shapes of crimson, blue and other
sweet and pure colors, even such as
the Madonnas of the old masters wear.
The scalp may be even more delight
full, with it's hairs like stout, brown
masts, greenish cuticle and sunset
tinted sub-dermal tissue below.
1t is obvious that with such an in
finite variety of material the micro
tomist must needs have great variety
of instruments. Some things he cuts
with common razor in his hand; such
must needs be of a firm consistency,
neither fabby nor brittle. Some again
larger things-he cuts with plane.
Little things that he cannot hold he
lmbeds in wax or carrot, or the pith of
the elder, and so gets dngerful that
may be grasped and cut A soft SUBJ
stance, such as human muscle, he
hardens by the immersion of lump Of
it in suitable fluid; or he takes it
fresh and almost living, and freezes it
firm upon metal slab by means of
ether. A rock is cut into thin slices
by a lapidary's wheel, rotating disk
of steel made keen by rubbing dia-
mond powder on the edge, and these
slices are stuck to piece of glass and
gradually rubbed thinner and thinner;
upon emery powder of increasing fine
ness, and finally upon rouge. Pow
derry things like sand grains the micro
tomist overcomes by imbedding in
hard substances. He particularly
breads and rejoices over such brittle
substances as coal. One would expect
mere blackness of coal even at it's
thinnest, but there are certain Goals
from Scotland which, when cut, reveal
myriads of little f1attened cases of
streaky orange or lemon-yellow color,
the spore shed long since by the trees
which perished to form our coal seams.
There are in London perhaps half
hundred or more human beings who
live by this unknown art. One we
know of plies his trade in a little den
high above the roar of the Strand. He
sits at his window facing the light,
watch-glasses and little shallow dishes
full of stains around him, microscope
and micrometer ready to hand some-
times amid heavy aroma of ether
from the freezing microtome, and some-
times reminding one oddly of pine trees
and wide mountain slopes, with the
resinous smell of his Canada balsam.
All about him are little bottles-in-
Vulnerable little bottles-labeled Skin
of toad" ''orange pips," pine infiores-
cence," 'lancelet," kittens lung"
"tumor," and the like-or rather the
unlike, some of them fit ingredients
for the brew of witch. One whole
shelf presently catches the eye, labeled
MRS. Webster" and in smaller letters
the part of Mrs. Webster is specified.
He relates gruesome story in
tone of pathetic regret; how this Mrs.
Webster was a landlady of his who
was ''post-mortemed" by a confiden-
tial friend. $50 1 took these little me-
mentoes," he says, waving his hand
at the shelf. 1t is grim and sordid
fate for landlady that she should
be peculated by her own lodger and
retailed at Cd, Cd. and Is. a slice,
according to the choiceness of the
parts. But there are those who sus-
pect our microtomist of having OBJ
tanned his human material in a leQiti-
mate way from the dissecting room.
and having created his Mrs Webster
for literary effect
Still, the tumble of matters in the
corpulent little bottles upon his shelves
remain odd enough; picked organisms
from the deep sea are side by side with
scraps of plant, root and stem, and the
mortal remains of a pet puppy; while
fruit that grew and ripened in a
jungle of Borneo shares bottle with
some cubic inch of substance that was
once part of the vestiture of human
soul in London hospital. Sooner of
later they will come to the knife edge
and the glass slip. Our microtomist is
indeed on the level of Shakespeare. All
being pays it's tribute to his art; he
makes it clear and brilliant for US,
using his stains and media not to hide
but to display, making truth truer and
the visible plain. His work is verita-I
BILE microcosm-a summary of the
world.
The ordinary microtomists who cut
sections for the medical students, as a
rule do little in the direction of cut
ting rocks. This has special tech
nique, and is practiced chiefly at
the greater geological schools
at the Royal School of Mines,
for instance. 1t is almost i'm
possible to convey an idea of the ap-
pearance of sections of some granite
rocks when seen in polarized light
Let the reader think of the tints of
film of gas refuse floating on water, of
the spectrum thrown by glass prism,
of fire opal, of the mother of pearl, of
old stained-glass windows, of Burne-
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