I prepared a couple more slides last night to test whether this was something that could be repeated.

The answer is yes, but it is also important to obtain a sample with the highest probability of containing some of the evil little critters.

These samples were from a less active rash site, and I found items of interest to be very sparse compared to the earlier sample. Location, location, location.

I took pictures of two of them that were of the squiggly little snake form, similar to the one on the lower left:

...So if you have a target rich sample, a good microscope, and a few hours to stare into it... it is possible to see what appear to be spirochettes of some kind.

(The symptoms would be suggestive of what species they might be.)

...And this little experiment is repeatable.

It is nothing at all exotic, just a decent quality biological microscope with good optics.

It does have Phase Contrast, which makes the more translucent things easier to see, by giving them a little color around the edges.

This particular one is a Unitron model MPH made sometime in the late 1960's. I got it on ebay.

I am using an inexpensive digital eyepiece camera connected to a laptop to capture the images.

The highest power objective on the microscope is the 100x oil immersion lens, which is what I used for these pics.

I have several eyepieces with 10x to 20x magnification. The camera seems to be about equivelant to what you see with the 20x, so 100x times 20x equals about 2000x total magnification.

2000x magnification is about the practical limit for optical microscopes, because of the size of the light waves themselves.

This is fascinating. Thanks for putting these sneaky bug pictures on Lymenet. It's just amazing.

When I took some of my skin when I was health and put it under a microscope we added salt to one of the slides.

I recall my cells shivering up and dying. It also seemed like they were screaming as they shrunk up.

I am wondering if you put abx on the spirochetes while on the slides if you will be able to see anything?

It seems to simple of a question to me. There has got to be more to it.

You are very welcome! Enjoy the creepy little thing's pictures.

Kam,

Good question. In this case, these are already VERY dead. First they are spread out and dried. Then they are dipped in absolute methyl alcohol, so they stay stuck to the glass. Then they are dipped in two different color dyes, rinsed, and dried again. Very dead by that time, as all of their kind should be! )

So you can't watch them die because thay are already dead.

You mentioned the effect of salt on cells. All cells have some salt. .9% salt to be exact.

If you do just the opposite, put them in water with NO salt they do just the opposite. They swell up with water and burst, spilling out any critters that may be hiding inside the cells.

The spirochettes have no such cell membrane, so the water does not destroy them. All that is left is them and some pieces of the blown up cells. Makes the little devils easier to spot!

Antibiotics kill these so slow, if you could somehow watch them while alive you would get VERY, VERY tired waiting for them to die I think.

Is there any method that you know of, in which you could use your equipment to perform experimental tests on 'liquid-y' stuff like saliva, mucus, etc.?

Very good observation! I was so focused on spirochettes I wasn't paying much attention to the other objects.

All the red and white cells in these pics had their membranes blown to bits by adding water, so anything that had been in a red cell is out in the open.

Maybe it is time to look at some blood smears again... a little more closely.

That'e one thing I'd rather mot find in my blood.

They are hard to find even if you have really good sample with a concentration of them.

Fluids such as saliva might contain a few (or not), but they would be very sparse unless there was some serious disease activity going on at the time.

To illustrate what it is like finding things on a slide...

Picture the slide as a football field, grass and all. Now have someone scatter a few coins randomly about on it. If you walked around on the field for awhile you might find a few of them.

Now try it while looking through the cardboard tube from a paper towell roll...
That is about how much of the slide you can see through the eyepiece of a microscope at one time.

In the case of looking for 'keets in saliva... Imagine you are looking for a single penny or a button off your shirt on the same football field while looking through a cardboard tube.

You would probably see zillions and zillions of the usual mouth bacteria, though.

I don't have any really specialized equipment by the way, just a microscope.

Anybody could do this.

Yes. Wrights stain or Giemsa are common ones. I used "Hemal Stain" (probably a brand name) from a local science supply. It is supposed to be the same thing, but doesn't take as long.

I missed any previous posts on this so I don't know if this was mentioned already

Yes, there is a resemblence. These are many times smaller though, bacterial in size and captured at 2000x magnification.

The colors are not natural, the specimens are stained.

The Morgellon's photos I could find were mostly 10x to 60x.