Medicine: Viruses with Heads

The phenomenal new electron microscope (TIME, Dec. 14, 1942) has been taking a good long look at hitherto invisible objects. In the last two issues of the Journal of the American Medical Association, its bacteriological discoveries have been summarized. (Most of the 60 machines in existence are used in industrial work.) The microscope’s great magnifications—50,000 to 130,000 times normal size—have proved the existence of some things (e.g., molecules) only imagined before, of other things never imagined.* Some findings:

¶ Bacteria are far from being homogeneous globs of matter. The micrographs clearly show membranes, nuclei, sometimes surrounding capsules and whiplike appendages called flagella. Some of these details had been seen with ordinary microscopes, but many were unsuspected.

¶ The larger viruses and rickettsias (organisms involved in the various typhus fevers, smaller than bacteria, larger than viruses) show enveloping skins, light and dark areas within their bodies—they are probably cells similar to bacteria.

¶ At least one virus has a round “head” and a “tail” about three times as long as the head is thick. Another has an oval head and a long tail.

The Journal’s summary concludes that the electron microscope can eventually help doctors figure out a drug or vaccine to cure any infection.

*Electron microscopes do not let a man “look” at bacteria, nor do they take photographs. They spray electrons through a bacteria sample, making a silhouette picture on a fluorescent screen or photographic plate.