The Cancer Organism
Windle, Bertram C. A.
4OO THE COMMONWEAL September 2, 1925 THE CANCER ORGANISM By BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE IN a recently published review in The Commonweal on Professor Bragg's book, Concerning the Nature of...
...Let us remember that it is generally supposed that a speck 1/100 of an inch is the smallest thing that even very sharp unaided sight can detect...
...Barnard, who was president of the Royal Microscopical Society (19181919), has achieved what was thought to be the impossible, and actually produced an instrument by means of which objects of almost incredible minuteness can not only be seen, but photographed, and by that latter means made to yield up details of structure which the eye fails to catch...
...When Mr...
...Not to be unduly technical, let us recall the fact that the wave-length of light is too long to reveal the secrets of which we are in search —that is, ordinary white light, for the other kinds of light or parts of the spectrum have varying wave-lengths, shorter at the violet, longer at the red end...
...Students of the cell, on which so much intensive work has been done in the past fifty years, have time and again been brought to a stop by the inability of the ordinary microscope to penetrate the secrets they were trying to wrest from nature...
...Perhaps it will be interesting to afford some slight idea of the size—if size is the term to use—of this organism, for that will explain why it has up to now evaded observers...
...Hence quartz, through which these rays will pass, must be employed—not merely for the lenses but for the illuminating apparatus, and even for the slide or slip of glass on which the object under examination rests, and, of course, the very thin "cover-glass" which is placed jn the object between it and the lower lens of the microscope...
...A micron is a unit used by physicists to indicate O.OOI mm...
...Special methods of illumination were required because these ultra-violet rays will not pass through glass of which, in the past, microscopic lenses were made...
...Barnard solved the difficulty by using a mercurial lamp, and the green band in the spectrum for visualization, with the violet band for photographic purposes, thus making use of very short-waved forms of light...
...The instrument in question is unlike the microscope, with which everybody is familiar, in that it has no body tube, so that the focussing of the ocular (the lens) through which one looks, can be effected without disturbing what is known as the objective or lens nearest to the object under examination...
...This wonderful series has been constructed by Messrs...
...It is with the aid of this marvelous instrument that Dr...
...That review was written some months ago, and it now appears that the statement is inaccurate...
...Gye has recently announced the discovery of the organism of cancer— an announcement which is causing so much excitement at the present moment...
...Small enough one would imagine, but the cancer organism is only 1/10 of this...
...4OO THE COMMONWEAL September 2, 1925 THE CANCER ORGANISM By BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE IN a recently published review in The Commonweal on Professor Bragg's book, Concerning the Nature of Things, I made the remark that the microscope was doomed to failure in discovery of the secrets of the almost infinitely small, for optical reasons...
...or 1/25,000 of an inch...
...Barnard's instrument becomes available and others have learned to work it (at present Dr...
...The ordinary bacterium of which we read so much—say a micrococcus—has a diameter of one micron...
...Gye says that no one but its inventor can do that) it is impossible to say what further wonderful discoveries will be made in connection with microscopic organisms—for example, the chromosomes...
...R. and J. Beck, of London, long known among the most skilled microscope-makers of the world...
Vol. 2 • September 1925 • No. 17
