The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-06-03
MICROSCOPE MANS
SECOND SIGHT
Remarkable Uses Science
Makes of Instruments
A DOZEN DEATHS SEEN
New Glass Promises to Show Things
seventy.fve Times as Small as
Any Yet Detected by
SaVants.

New York, June AT this season,
when every amateur naturalist in the
country is providing himself with micro
scopic apparatus for the summers out
ing among BEETLES, burrs and barteria.
the manufacturers of microscopes are
complaining that they cannot keep pace
with the demand. One firm alone in
New York city makes and disposes of
seventy-hve hundred of these indispen
sable instruments in year. The call
for high power instruments. furthermore,
is already producing results which could
not have been anticipated a year ago.
The latest development of the mag
nifying glass, one not yet carried to
completion, promises tho revelation Of
unseen things buried seventy-five times
deeper from our eyes than the strata of
minuteness to which the ordinary mi
croscope penetrates. This ultra-micro-
scope. as it is called, presents as yet
only a very unsatisfactory image. Par
ticles that were invisible before flash up
under the infringement of the strong
ray of light that is used, but their ma
ture is quite indsguishabe They APP
pear only as blurs. Yet the knowledge
that further vision exists is squirting
the inventor to pursue and establish
it.
Meantime it is in the field of medi-
cine that the miscroscope as we now
have it is doing the greatest and most
sensational things. Thus, its latest find,
the germ of hydrophobia, has created
all at once change in the method
of treatment of that disease. The pa
tient who has been bitten by a presum-
ably mad dog Is henceforth freed from
the long period of suspense that waited
on the results of the former method of
inoculating a rabbit with the virus of the
dog Now that the germ is known. its
presence or absence may be detected at
once by microscopic examination of the
brain substance of the alleged mad dog
and the sufferer either Immediately re-
lieved of his fears or warned that he
must undergo the Pasteur treatment.
Useful Tool.
The microscope is, in fact, the up-to-
date physicians most useful tool with
out it the germ theory of the origin
of diseases could not have been discov-
cred: without it the everyday practice
of medicine would be hopeessly ham,
pered. In such laboratory as that of
the Post Graduate Medical School and
hospital of this city not only is 1t used
for diagnosis of cases in the wards and
for the meteorological training of hun
dreds of physician students from all parts
of the United States and foreign lands.
but 1t examines specimens sent to it from
all over the world and from the private
I 1T If .1.,11
New York physicians and surgeons, who
comprise the institutions teaching fac
| fully. Here the microscopes are in full
| force on the glass table tops, one for
| each worker and clusters of test tubes
stand about i'm their supports. together
with bottles OF colored liquids, and all
manner of stuffs christened In Greek
and Latin. Here in cases. are myriads
of microscope ''slides''-small oblong
bits of glass smeared with bacterial
specimens of the thousand known vare-
ties. and in large copper incubator are
the deadly cultures" in which the bac-
teriologist takes great pride as tho
suburbanite in his successful backyard
garden.
A culture, as even the layman is be-
ginning to understand is a germ growth
induced outside of the human body by
placing 1t in a medium favorable to its
development. Beef serum combined with
gelatine is the commonest medium though
for specific purposes potato Is often used
or agar-agar. known also as Japanese
moss The culture is used to prove be-
You'd doubt the nature of germ disease
little pathological material from the
parts affected is taken from the body of
the patient by means of a platinum wire
loop or a swab of cotton, and smeared
over the surface OF the serum contained
in a test-tube In a greater or less length
of time the germ either develops and Is
identified by the microscope, or 1t does
not develop.