1897] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 287 



" be equally untrustworthy if tlie material to be exaniiued 

 be placed in a receptacle, found perhaps in some old 

 garr(?t and half cleansed. Conclusions reached under 

 such conditions must be erroneous. Do you ask who 

 ever allows sucli procedures ? Go to the home of the 

 amateur or pseudo-microscopist, observe his methods and 

 technique and you will have the answer. It is surpris- 

 intj how much we see, how much we assume and how 

 little we know. A young physician asks an older 

 one for the use of his microscope to examine a specimen 

 of urine, assuring its owner that he is familiar with the 

 instrument, having had instruction in college; permis- 

 sion granted, and slide prepared, and the observer 

 exclaims, "The most beautiful specimen of a cast I have 

 ever seen-; " the owner of the instrument says, "That 

 looks like vegetable matter and not a cast." "No," said 

 the other, "that is a urinary cast; I have seen many of 

 them." A microscopical examination of the container 

 and its contents revealed a corncob for a cork; what the 

 cast was yo.i may readily infer. 



A physician of several years' standing and the posses- 

 sor of a good microscope at an autopsy of his announced 

 that the patient's death was due to a disease of the kid- 

 neys, that she had been passing blood, pus, all forms of 

 casts and other bad material with the urine. The autopsy, 

 however, revealed ulceration with pus formation, degen- 

 eration and rupture of the gall-bladder, produced by 

 impacted gall-stones, while the kidneys were practituilly 

 normal, showing no structural degeneration. From 

 whence, tlien, came the blood, pus, casts and debris, 

 which was alleged to have been seen ? These cases 

 could have been none ottier than of mistaken identity ; 

 something was inferred that did not exist. 



The conclusion is ilierefore reached, justly or otherwise, 

 that the eye and understanding must be educated indo- 

 peudently along certain lines before the manipulatiou of 



