Collecting and Recollecting: Gifts from the Recent Past
Microscopes
Student Microscope
Manufactured by Carl Zeiss, Jena, Germany
circa 1920
Like all medical students at The University of Iowa in 1927, Alson Braley, MD, was required to purchase his own "student" microscope for school use. Dr. Braley remembers a supply company representative selling these necessary school supplies "door to door" in the medical student dormitory. The salesman offered both German microscopes and American-made Bausch and Lomb models. Students made $5 monthly payments for a year to pay for the microscopes.
| Portable student microscopes were designed to be carried to and from the laboratory. These scopes did not have their own lamps, so the lab tables were designed to accommodate them. Holes were cut in the table tops and a light placed underneath to illuminate the slide from below. Each monocular (single eyepiece) scope came with four lenses. Dr. Braley used this microscope throughout his training at University Hospitals until the 1930s, when the more comfortable binocular (double eyepiece) microscope came into general use.
Dr. Braley worked as a pathologist until 1934, when he began work under the direction of a specialist in the Department of Ophthalmology. He became head of that department in 1950 and served until 1967.
After he retired in 1967, Dr. Braley sold his house to Eugene Boyd, MD, who found this microscope wedged in an unexcavated part of the basement. |
19. Miscroscope and case |
Given by Eugene Boyd, MD, Iowa City,
on behalf of Alson E. Braley, MD
Student Microscope
Manufactured by The Himmler Co., Berlin, Germany
circa 1920
20. Close-up of microscope |
This student microscope was purchased by Hans Salzmann, M. D., in 1920 when he was a medical student in Berlin, Germany. Student microscopes were generally equipped with three or four lenses of different magnifications for examining specimen and pathological samples.
In the early 1940's Dr. Salzmann and his family emigrated from Germany to the United States. Dr. Salzmann worked in Manhattan as an internist at Mount Sinai Hospital and also had a private practice in his home. Ruth (Salzmann) Becker remembers this microscope in her father's office at home.
Donated by Ruth H. Becker, RN, Iowa City,
in memory of her father, Hans M. Salzmann, MD |
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