Microscope
date: label: date made
content: ca 1890 - 1904
name: label: maker
content: Zeiss, Carl
notes: label: Description
content: This medium-sized compound monocular is a Zeiss model IVa with coarse and fine focus, triple nosepiece (with three Zeiss objectives), square mechanical stage, trunnion, Abbé condenser with iris diaphragm that can shift from left to right, sub-stage mirror, horseshoe base, and wooden box with extra lenses. The “Carl Zeiss / Jena / No 23175” inscription on the tube is in block letters (not cursive), and of the form that the firm used before introducing its trade mark in 1904. The microscope was probably purchased in the 1890s for use in the Hygienic Laboratory of the United States Marine Hospital Service, a facility that was then located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and that later became the National Institutes of Health.
label: Description
content: The first Marine Hospital Service Hygienic Laboratory was established on Staten Island in 1887 by Joseph Kinyoun (1860-1919), a young American physician who had studied bacteriology with Robert Koch in Germany. Kinyoun equipped the Hygienic Laboratory with scientific apparatus “modeled after those used in the laboratory of Dr. Koch,” including “Zeiss’s latest improved microscope objectives and micro-photographic apparatus.” In September 1887, Kinyoun used a Zeiss microscope to examine the “excreta” of sick passengers on an Italian ship recently arrived in New York, and determined that the cause was cholera. This, says historian Eva Ahrén, “was the first time cholera was identified by means of microbial investigation in the Americas.”
label: Description
content: Ref: Carl Zeiss, <i>Microscopes and Microscopic Accessories</i> (Jena, 1898), pp. 46-47.
label: Description
content: Victoria Harden, <i>Inventing the NIH: Federal Biomedical Research Policy 1887-1937</i> (Baltimore, 1986).
label: Description
content: Eva Ahrén, “Joseph Kinyoun, the Hygienic Laboratory, and the Origins of the NIH,” http://irp.nih.gov/catalyst/v20i6/nih-in-history
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany: Thuringia, Jena
topic: label: Subject
content: Science & Scientific Instruments
label: Subject
content: Public Health
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Medicine
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content: Microscopes
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content: The Antibody Initiative
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content: Health & Medicine
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content: Antibody Initiative: Infectious Disease, Allergy, and Immunotherapy Collections
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content: Science & Mathematics
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Transfer from U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare. Public Health Service
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1980.0349.06
label: accession number
content: 1980.0349
label: catalog number
content: 1980.0349.06
objectType: label: Object Name
content: microscope
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: case: 14 3/4 in x 7 1/8 in x 8 1/4 in; 37.465 cm x 18.0975 cm x 20.955 cm
label: Measurements
content: microscope: 12 5/8 in x 3 5/8 in x 5 1/2 in; 32.0675 cm x 9.2075 cm x 13.97 cm