PHOTORAPHING MICROBES.

Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 28 August 1912, Page 7

PHOTORAPHING MICROBES.

Successive photographs of living objects in rapid motion, magnified 600 to 1000 times, have been taken by. M. Comandon, a French scientist, at the rate of several thousand per minute, and the many kinematograph films prepared have been used by the firm of Pathe Freres for some marvellous exhibitions on the screen.. In making the pictures, the ultra-miscroscope was used ,the objects, being illuminated by powerful rays of light from one side. Among the most interesting films are those of the blood as it circulates, with its normal and abnormal contents, the tail of a tadpole, showing a number of little blood-vessels—each l-2500th inch in diam.iter—through which the red ccrpu&clos pass with the circulation, while the colourless cells, or leucocytes, change about with an independent motion of their own. In some films these leucocytes, now known to be the blood's scavengers, are seen in the act of seizing and absorbing foreign master, such as diseased cells or microbes. Such pictures as these are reproduced on the screen much less rapidly than they are taken, thus bringing to the eje's perception the quick darting about of the organisms that swarm in the blood in certain diseases; but another class—like those of growing plants—are taken \ery slowly,' and exhibited at a rate quickened to make the motiou visible.