The Meaning of a Microscope

Valuing the past

A half century ago at the beginning of my training in medicine, I spent many long hours with microscopes learning and memorizing the intricacies of bacilli, cells, and tissues. The microscope was part of the triad of foundational technology in medicine, composed of the microscope, the stethoscope, and the fountain pen. All played honored roles in my daily life. An old, abused instrument even enabled my diagnosis on a county hospital admitting ward of a rare case of Plasmodium ovale, a form of malaria only seen at that time from a small West African nation and completely unexpected in our facility. My senior physician, a fellow in Infectious Diseases, treated my diagnosis with open contempt until he placed his eye over the objective lens and saw what Galileo’s occhiolino had revealed within the patient’s red blood cells.