THE MICROSCOPE. 17 



VEGETABLE CELLS AND STRIATED MUSCLE. 



A FEW days ago an agent called at my laboratory to urge the 

 necessity of my purchasing a new encyclopedia. He found me 

 at work in my private dissecting room. This led him to inquire if 

 I were an M. D. I was obliged to inform him that I had never 

 attended medical lectures, although I had done some work in prac- 

 tical anatomy and had read medical works. 



"Then did you ever hear of the tape-worm ?" he asked. 

 t I at once showed him specimens, both macroscopically and 

 microscopically. 



This conversation resulted in his telling that he had been under 

 treatment for that trouble for some time without relief. Three phy- 

 sicians had prescribed the various anthelmintics with no cure. They 

 succeeded only in removing the "egg cases." Some of these " cases " 

 were brought the next day for me to examine with the micro- 

 scope. They were resolved into the striated muscle fibre of the 

 animal kingdom and the cells, vessels, etc., of the vegetable kingdom. 

 I made a rash guess and accused my patient of having eaten 

 mince pie for his supper the day before. He confessed that he did 

 so each evening, "if it was to be had." A cessation of the pie 

 caused a disappearance of all the symptoms of taenia, and a lighter- 

 hearted man left town ; so light-hearted was he that he forgot 

 even to thank my microscope for what it had accomplished. 



T. B. S. 



Bacteria, the Cause of Caries. — In conclusion, then, in 

 order to be correctly understood, we repeat that acids are not the 

 cause of carious tooth structure. The real cause is bacteria in- 

 augurated by air germs through first ferment. All pits, fissures, 

 abraded, hidden, and all inaccessible places in and around the 

 teeth, 'where particles of food or foreign matters of any kind are 

 lodged and unmolested, organism follows organism, absorbing the 

 bioplasm in the canaliculi, leaving the limey substance to disinte- 

 grate. The change of shade is caused by the pigment in the proto- 

 plasm of bacteria, which is light, yellow, brown or dark, according 

 to organic advancement. — Independent Practitioner. 



