792 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
recoup the experimental outlay. Thus it has happened that each 
optician has had to secure for himself one or more of these patrons, 
each of whom has had his own pet schemes to promote, and there has 
been no sufficient inducement of probable commercial success to warrant 
the planning of the manufacture of Microscopes on a thoroughly econo- 
mical basis, by which the most efficient instruments could be produced 
at a minimum price. The want of concerted action on the part of 
teachers has thus led to an immense waste of production — a waste 
amounting in many cases to 50 per cent, or more. It should also be 
noted that the optician is not, as a rule, catering directly for medical 
students ; he has first to secure the good offices of an influential medical 
patron, who will instruct his pupils to purchase the apparatus he 
recommends. Unless, therefore, he is willing to forego his own indepen- 
dence of action, and carry out strictly the orders of his patron, the 
patronage is transferred to a more willing agent. It is wholly beside 
the mark to urge that the optician is not bound to follow such orders, 
that he may use his own discretion on the matter. In practice it may 
happen that Dr. Microtome, professor of microtomic biology at half a 
dozen medical schools, whose patronage is good for the sale of some scores 
of Microscopes per session, knows nothing whatever about the construction 
of Microscopes, or he may have just the smattering of interest in 
mechanical design that finds outlet in pressing forward novelties qua 
novelties, regardless of their practical value ; but he is keenly alive to 
the importance of having his name connected with some form of student’s 
Microscope, and he knows the value of his patronage ; the optician is, 
therefore, obliged to accept the terms proposed to him, and to produce 
Students’ Microtomic Bacteriological Microscopes according to instruc- 
tions. To add to the confusion of the circumstances, nearly every 
medical session is accompanied by changes in the medical staff; new 
ideas crop up or old ones are revived ; the optician is appealed to for 
this or that petty modification in the design of the Microscope, and thus his 
skill and experience are too often frittered away in carrying out trumpery 
suggestions which would not stand a moment’s discussion before a jury of 
experts. To meet this incessant order of change one optician in London 
has made upwards of twenty different forms of students’ Microscopes 
during the past ten years. 
My impression is that the present requirements of students do not 
really necessitate the construction of an entirely new design of Micro- 
scope, but only the combination or adaptation of a number of useful 
points which already exist either together or separately in known models. 
The student wants a stand that will enable him to get the best work out 
of his optical means. High-class instruments exist which appear to 
satisfy the demands of the most fastidious microscopists. It would 
appear, then, that there is no need for the invention of a new model : 
we want only the application of common sense to the process of selecting 
and embodying in the most economical way the points of construction 
which experience has shown to be the most essential in the high-class 
Microscopes. 
It may be, however, that the majority of teachers in medical schools 
have no particular claim to be regarded as experts in the use of the 
Microscope, and hence that a committee of them would carry no very 
