I’m not really on Twitter anymore. I think Stephen Fry got it right. After having been put under the microscope himself, he was done with that “stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous”. Certainly, that was my experience back in 2016 and, tragically, much more recently too. More on that later.
However, I did check Twitter this morning. What caught my eye was this image and a trending, breathless headline about mouthwash reducing SARS Cov 2 in saliva.
There was something very peculiar.
Yes, the science writing was terrible. COVID-19 cannot be in saliva. The virus SARS CoV 2 can be in saliva. COVID-19 is the illness, not the virus. And before you go calling me a pedant, remember that it is one and the same herpes virus that causes distinct diseases – chickenpox is not shingles. Science writers should get this right.
Also, the yet to be reviewed scientific article didn’t really impress me. Sure, like a shot of whiskey, mouthwash with cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) can reduce the amount of viable virus. Hydrogen peroxide does a better job. It gets rid of more of the virus with just one 15-second rinse.
Hydrogen peroxide is safe if you accidentally swallow a little. Veterinarians even suggest this as an effective a way to get a dog to regurgitate a swallowed object.
Because it quickly degrades into water, hydrogen peroxide is safer for the environment than CPD. Meanwhile, wide use of CPD is associated with the development of antibiotic resistance.
None of that was what really caught my attention.
Look at the photo. I know! You see it too. The “scientist” is using the wrong microscope to look at a glass slide! You need a compound microscope for that, of course. Regardless, viruses can’t be seen under the microscope, not with that kind of microscopy. That photo has no relationship whatsoever to the story. Some flunky at Twitter used a stock “scienc-y” image, confident that no avid tweeter can critically think their way out of a wet paper bag.
That photo is fascinating to a microscopist like me. I chuckled when I zoomed in and saw the distinct labelling: “N.B.S. Microslide Prepared… England“
The presumptively earnest COVID-19 scientist in the photo is looking at the leg of a spider under the microscope. It’s mounted under a coverslip on a glass slide prepared for the pleasure of amateur microscopists and teachers. It probably dates to Ipswich, England in the early 1970s. I know this because I had a set of those slides.
It was Peter Belshaw who hooked me.
I always wanted to be a scientist. I did very dangerous things in the basement with a chemistry set that no 9-year-old should be allowed to do. Peter had a microscope and a bunch of prepared slides. He even showed me how he made his own slides. In some cosmic twist, Peter grew up to be a Chemistry professor and I grew up to be a Biologist. Regardless, it was Peter Belshaw who first got me interested in something I have until recently done almost every day of my adult life: microscopy.
The Northern Biological Supplies company died with its creator Eric Marson in 2002. He started the operation in Yorkshire during the Great Depression. At first, N.B.S. was a side hustle supplying schools and colleges with rabbits (and parts thereof). Fascinated with microscopic pond-life, Marson became a microscopist while working in a pharmacy.
The Second World War took Marson to Sri Lanka where stunning patterns of tropical spiders got his attention. There, he learned to preserve and mount spiders (and parts thereof) on slides. He even wrote a couple of peer reviewed papers later published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London.
Returning from Burma in 1946, Marson pivoted the focus of Northern Biological Supplies to the expert manufacture and distribution of prepared microscope slides for teaching. He made a strategic deal with the Britex Scientific Instruments corporation. Every Naturalist Microscope sold by Britex came with a set of N.B.S. slides.
The “microslides” all were made by hand, and most of those by Marson himself. In the early 1980s his operation had expanded to a second microscope manufacturer, the Lensman hand-held microscope and a wide range of retailers all around the UK. Marson even vertically intergated the small-volume distribution of microscopy supplies to enthusiasts.
Expertly wielding a compound microscope is a fine skill. It is an art form in itself. It requires patience and finesse, practise and love. Eric Marson made microscopy a possibility for thousands of amateurs… like Peter Belshaw, and me.
I haven’t seen Peter since I was 9 years old. We have both now departed academia. I have felt rather put under the microscope myself of late.
I think I’ll give Peter a call.