14 THE MICROSCOPE. 
tion! Nothing more marvelous was ever seen in the microscopic 
world; and a new science has thereby been opened to the study of 
men.” 
The foregoing brief consideration of the methods of experi- 
mentation, it seems to us, is sufficient to do away with all claims 
that can be urged in favor of these methods of so easily proving 
statements so important. Nothing in favor of his position can be 
proven by them, but briefly his reasoning from his data. He re- 
gards all the forms seen on the slides as varying forms of fibrine. 
What has become of the remains of the red and the white corpus- 
cles, which the best analyses have shown represent 45 per cent. of 
the blood, where are the other substances that with the fibrine go to 
form the plasma of the blood, where is the albumen, the fatty 
matters, the crystallizable nitrogenous matters, and the mineral salts, 
any one of which is present in greater quantity than is the fibrine. 
How can Dr. Gregg detect the form taken by the fibrine when 
in so minute a proportion and in so large masses as he examines. 
But Dr. Gregg specifically states after enumerating countless forms 
similar to all the bacteria described by observers, that “all consisted 
of fibrine of healthy blood which had been organized by standing, 
first into granular, then into threads or fibrils, more or less of 
spiral form; and next partially disorganized by boiling to take 
all the numerous forms to correspond exactly with what 
the “bacterists’ have seen in disease ‘and miscalled 
bacteria. Again we ask can we logically place any 
credence upon such statements. Looking for the fibrine under such 
circumstances is like looking for the needle in the hay-stack; or 
more exactly like trying to select in an army of a thousand men, 
three friends in uniform similar to the rest, the work to be done 
with a poor telescope and at a distance. 
But we will proceed further: ‘Rotted blood shows even still 
more astounding results. It gives far greater numbers of all the 
forms just named and many more besides. There is nothing in the 
way of a thread or a combination of threads, or of granules, can be 
put into that is not imitated more or less exactly by fibrine in rotting 
blood.” 
Again “we have nearly the same proportion of fibrine in 
rotting blood as in boiled blood.” But the doctor has over- 
looked the fact that to-day the most eminent scientific men 
