The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-06-03
THE MODERN MICROSCOPE
 IS MANS SECOND SIGHT
Remarkable Uses of the Instrument That Reveals Small Creatures Big with Direfu ConsequencesA Dozen Deaths Seen Tangible
 Form in New York Medical Schools Laboratory

 New York, June 2, 1sos--At this sea son, when every amateur naturalist in the country is providing himself with microscopic apparatus for the summers outing among beetles, burrs and bac~ teria. 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-five hundred of these indis- pensable instruments in year. The call for high power instruments. fur thermore, is already producing results which could not have been anticipated a year ago.
 The latest deve1opment of the magni- flying glass, one not yet carried to completion, promises the revelation of unseen things buried seventy-five times deeper from our eyes than the strata of nninuteness which the ordinary mi croscope penetrates. This untra- micro scope as 1t is called. presents as yet only a very unsatisfactory image. Par ticIes that were invisible before flash LID under the infringement of the strong ray of light that Is used. but their nature is quite indistinguishable. They apear only as blurs. Yet the knowledge that further vision exists Is spurring the inventor to pursue and es- tablish it.
 mcanWnlle, II IS III tnc iltiu Ct NtGui- cine that the microscope as we now have 1t is doing the greatest and most sensational things. Thus. its latest find, the germ of hydrophobia, has ere ated all at once change in the method Of treatment of that disease. The pa tient who has been bitten by presun,- ably mad dog is henceforth freed from the long period of suspense that waited on the results of the former method of xuff ha Utrne nf the dog. Now that the germ Is known. It's presence 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
 The microscope is, in fact, the up-to- date physicians most useful tool. without It the germ theory of the origin of diseases could not have been discovered; without 1t the everyday practice of medicine would be hope lessly hampered. Tn such laboratory as that of the Post Graduate Medical School and Hospital of this city not only is 1t used for diagnoses of cases in the wards and fo rthe bacterioioglcal training of hundreds of physician stu dents from all parts of the United States and foreign lands, but it exam ines specinnens sent to 1t from all over the world and from the private prac- tfces of the two hundred or more New York physicians and surgeons Wno comprise the institutions teaching tac u1ty. Here the microscopes are in fu'I force. on the glass table tops, one TOT each worker. and clusters Of test tuoes stand about in their supports. together with hotties of colored liquids, and all manner of stuffs christened in Greek and Latin Here. in eases, are myriads of microscopic "slides"-sman, oblong bits of glass smeared with bacterial specimens of the thousand known va rieties, and in a large copper incuoator are the deadly "cultures, in Whlch the bacterioloeist takes as great pride as the suburbantte Tn ms successiui oaoh yard garden.
 culture, as even the laymen is be- ginning to understand. Is germ growth induced outside of the human body by placing 1t in a medium favor- able to its development. Beef serum combined with gelatine Is the common est medium, though for specihc pur- noses potato Is often used. or agara- agar, known also as Japanese moss. The culture Is used to prove beyond doubt the nature of germ disease. little pathological material from the narts affected Is taken from the podN of the patient by means of platinum wire loop or a swab of cotton. and smeared over the surface of the serum contained in a test tube. In greater ar less length of time the germ either develops and is identified by the mi croscope, or it does not develop. By the method known as the Wiual reaction, employed in typhoid. the cul- ture furnishes further method or identification A particle of matter supposed to bear the germ of typhoid is taken from the suspected patient and nut with a small quantity Of pure tvphoid culture Very quickly any doubt Is removed by the microscope which, in event of true case or ty-
 phoid, will reveal the bacilli clumped | together in a single colony. when there Is no infection in the sample Of | material, tte microscope shows tne tvphoid germs like straight bits or hrol<en sticks, scattered and separate The incubator contains other pros narous families of microbes besides the bacili of typhoid It is warmed to b1ood heat by a lamp that, like the Iamn of the sanctuary. never goes out, and in its grateful atmosphere i've anu thrive and multiply in their small glass containing tubes is the deadliest enc noies of human kind. If ever deatn were to be seen Tn tangible form IL is here. bottled cloudy smear over the gelatin in the test-tube may mean g. myriad of diphtheritic baci!li' or countless spirrilla of cholera. If the roicroscope's eye be put to a specl- men of diphtheria culture 1t will re- veal A network of detached rods some times tied up in square DOW knots' The cholera germ appears like larger rod crinkled. The Bacillus Tupercu-