Don't eat raw pork!

Tom Jones · Post by **Tom Jones** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 10:19 am

We've all been told over the years to never eat raw or undercooked pork. Here's the reason: Trichinella spiralis. These are larval cysts in muscle tissue. The shot was done for a high school classroom presentation I give on clinical lab science, microscopy and microbiology. The nematode isn't much of a problem anymore in commercially produced meat in the US. It is a problem however, in lots of wild and non-commercially grown meat, not just pork.

As you might imagine, the photo has an interesting effect on the students. I doubt any will ever eat undercooked pork after seeing this!

The slide is a eBay find mounted by A.C. Cole. It's undated other than his Prize Medal, Paris, 1867 note. Since he died in 1900, it's from sometime between the two.

The stain is pretty weak after all these years. It didn't show the worms very well, so I used DIC.

The colors are an optical staining effect using a custom polarizer assembly I made. The linear polarizer has individually rotatable 1/4 wave and full wave plates stacked on top for better color control.

Olympus BX-50, UPlanFl 10x, DIC, PE 2.5x, Canon 40D, strobe. Single frame.

Tom

Cactusdave · Post by **Cactusdave** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 11:50 am

Clever use of 'optical staining'. That's a very nice picture.

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 12:17 pm

Very impressive colors, and details for something well over 100 years old. But now I am curious to know what it looks like under regular light.

Tom Jones · Post by **Tom Jones** » Fri Apr 29, 2011 8:12 pm

Thanks Dave. That general color combination was the first that popped up when I moved the DIC prism into place. I couldn't find a combo I thought was prettier. A little tweaking to get good definition in the larvae at the head of the one in the lower right (I wasn't concerned about having the muscle fibers in focus), and fine tune the colors was all it took. I think it's going to make a nice print, too.

To be honest, I shot it the night before a presentation and was too pressed for time to try and stack/retouch it.

Mitch-I just went back to look at it again in regular light. It's quite bland actually, and really too ugly to shoot

. Almost all of the tissue shows as light brown/tan with very little color differentiation. The larvae and some of the cell nuclei show a little darker purple/black granular staining. Since the stain isn't listed on the slide, I can't tell if it's just a lousy stain, or has lots of fading due to age. Still, the slide only cost me $26, and I can't complain for something well over 100 years old!

Tom