THE BATTLES OF THE GERMS.

North Otago Times, 3 December 1910, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE BATTLES OF THE GERMS.

• . *-r MYSTERIES OF THE BLOOD VEALED.A French scientist, Dr. Jean Oomandon, has devised a wonderfully ingenious machine, which makes plainly vistbls to the eye the fight between disease germs and blood corpuscles, and the various processes that aro constantly going on in the human body. These processes are.quite invisible to the naked eye and have hitherto been observed by doctors only, with the greatest difficulty. The left-' machine not only makes them jiWinly visible, but keeps a perfect wicture of them. It is a combination of very highly developed microscope and a cinematograph,

Take a patient suffering from consumption and on the road to recovery under medical treatment. You look at a drop of his blood and there you sec the fight between the blood corpuscles and the agents of death. Tiny, restless, thrcad-liko microbes circulate among the red and white blood corpuscles, The machine shows one of them entering a red blood corpuscle and deforming it. This is the process by which germs cause death.

Immediately the white corpuscles surround the infected red corpuscle and attack it. They increase in size and number as they fight, Tbey bombard the diseased red corpuscle furiously. They cluster round -it like hounds at the throat of a wild beast. Finally one of them absorbs it, swallows it, and that disease germ ceases to exist, When " the red corpuscle containing the disease germ disappears, healthy red corpuscles form to take its place, but if the disease germs were not conquered, the new healthy corpuscles would not form. All this may happen very rapidly or very slowly, The new machine not only shows the process, hut records the rate at which it is proceeding,

MICROBES ON THE CINEMATOGRAPH.

On' the other hand, 'take a disease which is gradually conquering the sufferer. The sleeping sickness of Africa, caused by a little germ called the trypanosoma, is an example of this kind of a disease. When it has progressed to the sleeping stage, the patient never recovers, ' Two hundred thousand out of three hundred thousand natives in a certain district of Africa have died of it. In a drop of blood from a person suffering from sleeping sickness, Dr, Comandon's machine shows you the germs swarming in the blood and boring their way into the red corpuscles like gimlets. The white corpuscles attack the infected red corpuscles, as in other diseases, but they fail to overcome they grow weary of attacking and gradually give up the attempt, The germs increase until they fill up nearly the whole blood fluid, and the red corpuscles are split up and pass away.. Then the patient dies. All these processes have been recorded by Dr, Comandon's machine, which bears jrtii rather awkward name, ultra'vtoicroscopic cinematograph, ■■ The ultra-microscope, which forms part of the machine, is in itself a great improvement on the ordinary microscope. In the ordinary microscope the object is lighted from below, and as many germs are transparent, they become practically imperceptible, but in' the ultra-micro-scope the object is placed on a black background and a light thrown from the side, thus rovcaling a great deal more than the other.

Incidentally, it may be mentioned that one of the problems Dr. Comandon had most difficulty in overcoming was how to obtain enough light without generating so much- heat that that tho microscopic preparation would be burned, He surmounted this difficulty by devising an ingenious water-chamber.

The cinematograph films are taken atl the speed of sixteen to the second, Between the taking of each film there is a period of darkness lasting one-thirty-second of a second, during which time the microbes in the microscopic plate are not under the influence of the light and heat from the arc lamp or heliostat. The ultra-microscopic cinematograph enables one to magnify an object 10,000 or 20,000 diameters, and the records, when thrown on- the screen, represent microbe life magnified to this eitent.

A FLY as 810 as an ELEPHANT,

A fly similarly magnified would seem as big as an elephant. Owing to the extraordinary power of the ultra-microscope, it is possible to obtain ultra-microscopic cinematograph records of microbes or solid particles of which the diametor does not exceed one-millionth part of an inch, and which were not discernible under the ordinary microscope. The cinematograph film itself magnifies the microbes 280 times. Those who are familiar with physiological laboratory work know what difficulty attends microscopic research, whether with the ordinary microscope or with the ultra-micro-scope, Microscopic research involves great fatigue and absorbing attention, and leaves no permanent record of .the movements of the microbes that have been examined by the investigator, The old or ordinary microscope revealed only dead microbes, fixed and coloured, whereas the ultra microscope shows living microbes, with all their vital movements, destructive action, etc,

( This discovery, it is justly claimed, enable us. to obtain a much thorough knowledge of microscopy preparations than was hereto- . fore the case. And with the aid of his cinematograph films a profes3or of medicine can place before his students the actual living record of results embodying" the, work of years of research and can impress the Importance of certain discoveries upon his hearers with a minimum of effort, both on their part and on his. In small medical colleges it will be possible for the students' to benefit ■ immediately by the latest discoveries . of the leading professors in tbo greatest laboratpries of the world,"Popular Science Sittings."