290 proceedings of societies. 



Medical Microscopical Society. 



The third ordinary meeting of the above Society was held at the 

 Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital on March 21, at 8 p.m., 

 Jabez Hogg, Esq., President, in the chair. 



The Secretary read the minutes of the last meeting, which were 

 confirmed, and the President then announced that the next meeting 

 would be considered a Special General Meeting, for the purpose of 

 electing two new members of Committee. 



The papers promised for the present meeting having been unavoid- 

 ably withheld by their authors, Mr. Schafer described some of the 

 "methods of observing tissues in the living state," illustrating his 

 remarks by means of diagrams and instruments. Having dwelt 

 briefly on the importance of the subject, Mr. Schafer remarked that 

 the investigation of a subject was not complete till it had been micro- 

 scopically studied in the living state, and that such examination, at 

 least for warm-blooded animals, should be carried on at the tempera- 

 ture of the body. Much was to be learnt from the investigation of 

 tissues still attached to the living body, for thus had cell migration 

 been discovered by Cohnheim in the frog's mesentery, and experi- 

 ments on embolism had been made in that animal's tongue ; while the 

 tail of the tadpole had taught us much about connective-tissue cor- 

 puscles, and the development of blood-vessels. Muscular tissue was 

 best seen in the living state, in the smaller crustaceae. 



Living tissues, removed from the body, allowed of being studied 

 in many ways : some immediately without any addition whatever, as 

 red blood corpuscles, and striated muscular fibre ; while if any addi- 

 tion were necessary, a saline solution of • 75 per cent., or serum weuld 

 be best. For some purposes a moist chamber might be necessary, 

 such as Recklinghausen's, in which frogs' blood had been preserved 

 for days in a living condition (Schultze's ' Arch.,' 1866). Another form 

 was Strieker's putty stage, which was also useful for the application 

 of electricity in microscopical research by means of two electrodes of 

 tin-foil, the points of which nearly meet in the centre of the stage. 

 Mr. Schafer finally described and exhibited various forms of warm 

 stages, one kind of which, as Schultze's, was heated by means of a 

 lamp applied to metal arms, which conducted the heat to the object- 

 bearers ; another kind, as Strieker's, in which a constant temperature 

 was maintained by means of a current of warm water kept continually 

 flowing through it ; while another very ingenious form of stage, 

 somewhat similar to Strieker's, was so arranged that a constant circu- 

 lation of warm water was kept up in a closed system of tubes, the 

 temperature of which was regulated by a mercurial gas-regulator, and 

 measured by a thermometer, the bulb of which lay close to the 

 central chamber. A discussion then took place, and 



A vote of thanks was accorded to Mr. Schafer for his interesting 

 and instructive remarks, and it was then announced that all those 

 gentlemen proposed at the last meeting were duly elected members of 

 the Society, after which the meeting resolved itself into a conversa- 

 zione. 



