1890.] MICROSCOPICAL JOUENAL. 39 



MEDICAL MICROSCOPY. 



By F. BLANCHARD, M. D., 



PEACHAM, VT. 



The Positive Diagnosis of Syphilis. — A drop of blood just large 

 enough to fill the space between an ordinary cover-glass and an ordinary 

 slide, is obtained by puncture on the radial side of the wrist. The slide 

 is immediately transferred to the stage of a good microscope. 



If the light is properly adjusted, and the observer is sincere and com- 

 petent, as the syphilitic blood goes through its biological movements 

 in dying, there will be seen here and there, more or less numerous ac- 

 tive, automobile, sometimes saltatory, extremely minute globular bodies, 

 the spores of Crypta syphilitica^ which, when dancing or put slightly 

 out of focus, are copper-colored. The higher the power, the more 

 distinct this color. With the Tj^-g^-inch objective of Tolles, the copper 

 color has been found more marked than with any other power. 



Sometimes these spores will travel across the w^iole field. They are 

 found in the serum spaces, over the red corpuscles, and in the w^iite 

 corpuscles. In old cases they are found in the urine and especially in 

 the pus of chancres. These spores are the baby stage of Crypta syphl- 

 lltlca (Salisbury) . The fully developed form or parent plant is a cylin- 

 drical filament, slightly tapering, and is found in the blood in the form 

 of short curved segments, sometimes slightly clavate at one end and in 

 long strings or filaments, in coils, skeins, or comparatively straight. In 

 the walls of chancres they are very curling and spirally twisted, like the 

 vegetable filaments of the plant in carbuncle. These Crypta syphi- 

 litica filaments are also copper-colored when put a little out of focus. 

 The mature plant is not as common as the infantile, which has the power 

 of reproduction in its immature stage and of producing the physical and 

 chemical influences of the mature plant. 



The spores are to be distinguished from minute globules of fat. Fat 

 globules do not travel across the field save in currents of capillarity, in 

 which everything moves with them, nor do they travel in opposite di- 

 rections as syphilitic spores do. In the present stage of knowledge 

 the spores of syphilis are unique in their active, saltatory motions, and 

 copper color^ 



In a late trial for murder, the suspect's clothes were submitted to the 

 writer, apparently stained with blood, which had been more or less 

 marked by water. In the study of the morphology of this clothing, a 

 list was made of the objects found under the miscroscope along with 

 with the blood — as a matter of detail — not intending: to use the foreisrn 

 bodies as testimony. But the counsel for the defence in his cross-ex- 

 amination told the judge that he would show that I was not an expert, 

 and that I knew nothing about the subject. He then asked, " What 

 did you find in your examination .^" Thus challenged, the list was 

 partially read, embracing a variety of objects. In the list was included 

 syphilitic spores in active motion and enlarged white blood corpuscles, 

 which enclosed syphilitic spores. These attracted attention in and out 

 of the court-room. 



Subsequently the physician of the murdered man testified that he 

 was treating him for syphilis at the time of the murder. The jury 

 hung — ten for conviction and two for acquittal. Just before the second 



