Last semester I had a little fun with my microscope. I rubbed my eyebrow and took a sample. I used my little Olympus camera and a tripod, moving it around until it lined up with the ocular lens for a good picture, so excuse the bad photography. Here's what I found: Fungus! (100x): A dust mite (one of a couple) 100x: A typical integumentary squamous epithelial cell (dead skin cell) 100x: Ack! A microscopic worm called a nematode (100x): My weapon of choice, an American Optical Corp Model 60 microscope with 4x, 10x, 43x, and 100x (oil immersion) objective lenses. A little old by today's standards, but still works fine. I was given it by a medical student who just graduated.
That was just ONE little spot on my body. Our bodies are teeming with life other than our own; in (almost) every square inch. We are just beginning to understant the importance of our normal flora in our intestines. We are just now linking them to our brain chemistry as a possibility of why some of us can become unbalanced. If you are too clean, and kill off the E Coli that symbiotically lives on and in you, you can open yourself up for other infections (yeast) that can grow and multiply. The wee beasties eat the other wee beasties, kind of like Wild America! We are our own bioscapes. I just don't have the best equipment to show it.
