Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1921-08-04
Microscopes, Insects and Diseases.

AIMING inc many ana gOnISTIui re-
Violations CT the microscope rome is
more remarkable than the proof il has
given US OF an unexpected connection
between insects and diseases. In some
cases the connection amounts to a kind
OF partnership in which the insect
plays the part not merely of the carrier
but also OF a grower, farmer or cult
vator OF the germs of disease. AS for
germs, it $ pretty widely known that
the were FIRST seen about 1850 by
few observers who used the crude mi
crosccpe of that time, that they were
disrcgarded BY the world at large for
nearly two centuries, that they were
again observed and studied BY Louis
Pasteur about sixty years ago, and that
today the germ theory of contagious
diseases is everywhere accepted. And
yet comparatively few persons realize
that we owe almost all Of that know
ledge to the compound microscope and
especially to the all-important mod
ern and improved part Of it known as
the "achromatic" (color-free) objective
AS for insects, people have generally
looked upon them as troublesome but
not as dangerous unies they become
too numerous. 1t is certainly bad
enough when insects devour millions
of dollars worth of grain fit for human
food, or when they strip the leaves from
our orchards or destroy the cotton crops
or our Southern plantations. But,
bad as these things are, they are mere
trifles when compared with sleeping
sickness or with death carried by tsetse
flies in Africa, or with typhoid fever
in America borne on the feet of flies,
or with typhus fever in Serbia-or
nearer home-transmitted by body lice
The disease carriers are destructive
for while they are eating, biting and
destroying they may implant somewhere
in the bodies OF their victims the deadly
germ of disease-,minute, microscopic
and invisible. And here, we have a
new fact in the history OF science, a
fact wholly unknown until 1890 and
first established in America by Ameri-
cans.
That great discovery did not come
all at once, but only gradually; and at
every step the microscope has seen the
one indispensably helpful instrument
Neither the wisdom of the Greeks or
The Egyptians nor the ail-conouerer-
ing ambition Of the Romans suffice
to solve the mysteries Of disease. And
SO i was through the Middle Ages
and through the Renaissance on down
into the seventeenth century, when at
last the modern microscope was in
vented.
Hitherto the only microscopes avail
able had beer convex such as We now
use for reading glasses. They are
called "simple" microscopes and be-
come compound" only when two Of
them are rut together SO as to do
double work. BY the aid of the new
instrument microbes and yeasts were
discovered. But, though the micro
scope of the seventeenth century was
compound, it was crude and imperfect:
and almost two centuries more went
by with disease still an inscrutable
affliction.
Then at about the time the young
Queen Victoria assembled the British
throne q compound microscope, vastly
improved ~ a new kind of objective
called "achromatic," came into more
common use-an instrument that gave
an image not only greatly magnifed
but for the first time free from false
coors and distortion. Men of science
soon rediscovered yeast and began to
study microbes with comparative
ease Moulds and mildews we're
now more readily and thoroughly ex-
amined, and before long (about 1862
Louis Pastcur, a young French chemist
and mineralogist, sought the aid OF
the microscope in studying certain OBJ
scure changes in mouldy sugary
bodies. Led far afeld, he studied
yeastS, finding some tame" or "do-
mestcatcd," such az we use in bread
making, and others wild such as
those which turn grape juice into
wine.
Pushing on,-always with the mi
croscope at his right hand, Pasteur
found that unhealthy or disease wine
or beer or sour bread or sour milk
was infested by strange wandering
yeasts. or microbes, that caused un-
desirable or harmful changes in the