I50 THE MICROSCOPE. 



of these journals, published during the last ten years, had but five or 

 six references to these subjects in its first twenty volumes. Not an 

 original article, by an American physician, or more than one, per- 

 taining to microscopy graced the pages of these numbers. While 

 the works of foreign investigators, and even some of our American 

 microscopists, were highly commended by the editorial department 

 of this journal, its pages revealed the noticeable fact that little or 

 absolutely none of this work could be credited to our home physi- 

 cians. This criticism would justly apply to the majority of the med- 

 ical journals throughout our land. 



\ Our medical schools, or the great majority of them, at least, do 

 not profess to teach anything regarding the technology of micro- 

 scopic investigations. Practitioners are sent out into the world, 

 suitably qualified it may be to practice medicine, but many not know- 

 ing the difference between an eye-piece and an objective ; totally 

 unfit, so far as their medical education qualifies them, to use the 

 microscope in the examination of the simplest object ; knowing ver- 

 itably nothing regarding the instrument which has done more to 

 advance the science of medicine than any other in the long category 

 of instrumental accessories. While reasonable persons will admit 

 that "knowledge is power," at least, "in the long run" it appears 

 that many of our leading medical schools are controlled by the sen- 

 timent that microscopical knowledge does not enhance the physi- 

 cian's skill. Without a knowledge of histology, pathology, the nor- 

 mal and abnormal secretions of the body, as revealed by the micro- 

 scope, he is as fully — yea, according to ma/iy, better — qualified to 

 practice medicine than if he possessed this knowledge. 



f The editor of one of our microscopic journals makes the state- 

 ment that " as a matter of fact, physicians in general are utterly 

 incapable of using the microscope in their practice. They cannot 

 tell uric acid from triple phosphate, tube casts from cotton fibres, 

 cancerous from normal cells, or a starch grain from a blood corpus- 

 cle. Does this seem incredible ? What shall be said of the physi- 

 cian who bought a fine immersion lens and returned it as worthless 

 because he immersed it by filling the back with water and screwing 

 it on the stand, or of the other one who tried to examine a lump of 

 coal with a one-twelfth inch objective." What will we say of the 



t Am. Mo. Microscopical Jour., April, 1882. 



