The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1894-10-24

1eSOf coles.
Well, milk or tea or beer, 1 suppose"
"Then," was the cheerful response.
you'll simply swallow the same kind
of monsters, in another form; and if
you drink beer, youll swallow uglier
ones and more of them than you've seen
tonight. Why, the merest particle of
beer, under the Eye discloses. great
masses of vegetation on which long,
green, repellant looking worms and in
sects are creeping and feeding. Beer
is about the. worst stuff l know of,
and milk is a pretty close seconl. But
now if you wish, l will show ytE what
the human epidermis looks like"
Parasites on Our Bodies.
Upon the professors request, one of
the ladies barred her forearm over the
little aperture into which the rain wa
ter had been placed-the aperture had
meanwhile been made perfectly dry
and rubbed her finger three or four times
across the arms surface. 1t should be
said in the ladys behalf that she has al
ways been a devout and consistent be-
lever in the doctrine that cleanliness
is next to godliness, and takes her daily
bath as regularly as she says her daily
prayer To the ordinary eye, nothing
dropped from her wrist as result Of
this haSty abrasion, and several Of the
spectators We're inclined to treat the
test as joke.
But when the Electric Eye" was
turned on, and the lady was accorded
the courtesy of a first glance at the
minute fraction of herself which the
professor assured his guests had got
into the Instruments searching focus,
she fairly shrieked in amazement. Pic
tured against the Instruments back
ground We're dozens of fan-like, trans
lucent scales, ranging in size from the
flattened peeling of a goodly sized on
ion to the dimensions of the palm of
ones hand. Great, black streaks ap-
peared onand around these scales, which
at first We're inert; but presently there
were signs of life, and soon a little in
sect the size of bed bug scooted from
one scale to another. He was followed
by others, smaller and larger, until in
the course of a few moments the en-
tire perspective became one mass of
living, moving, clawing insects. One
of these seemed as large as the ordinary
house spider. Several resembled large
reaches. Others seemed to be like the
greenish, many legged, saw clawed
worms that feed on maple, green to-
bacco or tomato leaves. They chased
each other madly in and around these
big scales of abraded epidermis, some
climbing up over the scales and shak-
ing them after the manner of crickets
or pinching bugs when clambering over
small, dried leaves. The big fellows
seemed to be in pursuit of the smaller
ones, and now and then one voracious
rascal would gulp down an unfortunate
youngster with the calm unconcern Of
the monster pickerel fish when he
makes a dainty morsel of a captured
sinner.
Is Mass of Living Germs.
"The particles of epidermis which
look so large through this instrument"
explained Professor Coles, "are in real
ity incomputably small You couldn't
see them as Mrs. W brushed them
off; yet only small percentage of those
that she separated from the epidermis
of her arm fell into the feed-hole Of
the Eye There are, as you see, prob
ably a thousand of these diminutive
parasites in the view at which you
are looking. Yet all Of these together
could stand under the point of the
finest needle ever invented, and yet not
feel crowded. Upon a square inch Of
lions upon millions of perfectly devel-
oped living organisms, as intelligent in
proportion, as are the insects that we
daily encounter among plants andferns
and shrubs. l am as sure as that am
standing here that the human body
is literally made up of these parasites;
that they constitute the motive power
of our existence, so to speak, and that,
pnl1l1 pn inf ic
question, each one of these infintesi-
NAL beings in turn would be found
to be just as thickly inhabitated by
correspondingly smaller parasites. Our
common science, for instance, claims
to have discovered that the ordinary
house fly is inhabited by fly-lice. /
propose before | get through with my
inquiries, to prove to the scientists that
the fly-lice also have lice on them; and
furthermore, am going to show these
lice on the lice that live on the house
fly, just as clearly as / have shown
you the parasite that inhabits Mrs.
W-'s arm. cannot do this with my
present instrument, for it is crude and
imperfect in many particulars; but I
hope within six months at the outside
to have a new and larger instrument
which will enlarge the magnifying
power of the present Electric Eye four
or five times over"
Inhabitants of Our Blood.
The professor was asked to exhibit
some human blood. The same lady
who had supplied the epidermis kindly
volunteered to sacrifice a drop of her
vital fluid to the cause of science. The
merest quantity of it, almost invisible
to the human eye, was placed, as be-
fore. The spectacle presented was
marvelously beautiful 1t seemed as
If all the colors and combinations Of the
Kaleidoscope had been brought into
play White corpuscles as large as
hens eggs floated around in a pool of
colorless liquid, alternating with great
masses of red and brown coloring mat
ter. AS many as seven different kinds
of corpuscles were disclosed, whereas
the psychologists up to this moment
have taught that there are only two
kinds, red and white.
When DR.. Hand looked at these float
ing bodies of fibrin and fat, he turned
quickly around to Mrs. W and said;
"Your blood is in a very bad condition.
1t needs phosphates and iron. The
white globules should be round and
distinct; they are. instead, fiat and de-
pressed. You will need to go under
a treatment of mild tonics."
"Now," said Professor Coles, you
come to one of the most important uses
of my machine. / contend that by a
series of studies of the human blood
through the powerful magnifier 1t will
be possible to make diagnosis an abso-
lutte certainty. The physician will be
able to ascertain at glance exactly
what his patient is afflicted with, and
can apply the requisite cure without a
moments delay, watching its effects
with unerring precision. AS l have
said before, the Eye tonight is under
low pressure. When 1t is magnifying
it's maximum number of diameters,
you can see, in the blood, floating
around among the corpuscles, just such
living organisms as you saw few mo-
ments ago playing among the scales OF
Mrs. VS. epidermis. The blood is
the medium of exchange between these
tiny travellers. The veins and arteries
are the rivers that they swim in and
the blood is the water that flows in
those rivers
Brief Glimpes Of Mars.
BY this time, the planet Mars had
reached the fulness of its brilliancy and
shone, like an immense gem, in the