1896 THE MICROSCOPE. 149 



ing cover-glass preparations something more learned. — 

 Langs dale' a Lancet. 



The Physician and his Microscope. 



BY A. A. YOUNG M. D., NEWARK, N. Y. 



One of the most expensive and one of the most useless 

 pieces of office furniture that the ordinary physician 

 possesses is his microscope. It usually occupies a most 

 commanding and conspicuous place in the oflSce and dec- 

 orated with " fuss and feathers"; valueless as an educa- 

 tor, valuable for the macroscopical appearances of the 

 microscope, for it is capable of producing wonder and 

 awe to the office visitor and shekels to the pocket of the 

 physician. 



Nothing can be said against the microscope as an in- 

 strument, for its value resides in its intelligent use, and 

 unless used intelligently it becomes worse than useless, 

 distorting facts and fancies alike, from which the obser- 

 ver can form no concept, can draw no conclusion save 

 an erroneous one. The physician has to deal with the 

 organic world, with those material forms in which re- 

 sides that peculiar, unresolvable and unknowable agent 

 we call life, and without which matter becomes compara- 

 tively valueless, 



The microscope in the department of medicine requires 

 for its intelligent manipulation a familiarity with anat- 

 omy, pathology, bacteriology, and last, but not least, 

 biology, which subject scarcely ever enters into a medi- 

 cal college curriculum. We, as physicians, must deal 

 with material forms that are endowed with life, and of 

 that relation which exists between the material form 

 and life we must have some concept, though it be partial 

 and inadequate; for on the relation of things material or 



*Read at the nineteeath annual meeting ot the American Monthly Mi- 

 croscopical Society, Pittsburgh, Pa., August 19, 1896. 



