THe Microscope. 237 
these processes are mentioned. They doubtless occur in many 
pathological conditions.” 
In commenting on the paper Prof. Bell said that Dr. Tim- 
othy Lewis who had been making some operations in India, 
opened a dog and removed its two kidneys; one was placed di- 
rectly into warm paraffin and left to cool, and the other was ex- 
amined at once; the latter was found to contain no bacteria, but 
the one which had been put into the paraffin was found to be 
swarming with them. This fact had not been referred to by 
those who were at present examining into the nature of cholera 
germs, but he thought it contained a moral which applied to all 
forms of disease. 
Mr. Beck considered the question to be an extremely inter- 
esting one. If what the Secretary had said—that the bacteria 
were the result and not the cause of the disease—was well 
founded, the same might apply to other diseases. 
The President thought it was not Mr. Dowdeswell’s inten- 
tion to say that there were disintegrated corpuscles, but that 
there were pseudo-bacteria. In the case of splenic fever the 
specific forms had been seen, and it had been not only proved 
that when introduced into the system they would give rise to the 
disease, but that when they had been filtered out the disease 
could not be so communicated, so that it was clear in this case 
that the bacteria were the absolute cause and not the result of 
the disease. 
THE SECTION OF HISTOLOGY AND MICROSCOPY AT 
PHILADELPHIA. 
PROFESSOR T. G. WORMLEY, PRESIDENT. 
Alexis A. Julien read a paper on an immersion apparatus 
for the determination of the temperature of the critical point in 
the fluid cavities of minerals. The author described a new de- 
vice for raising a thin section of a mineral, mounted’‘on a glass 
slide, to an accuratety determinable temperature upon the stage 
of the microscope. The arrangement consists of a thin walled 
box heated by conduction from a taper through the copper plate 
which forms its bottom, and which projects beyond the stage. 
The thermometer has a scale ranging from 22° to 45° C.; each 
