A darkfield microscope is a magnifying device in which objects are lit at a very low angle from the side so that the background appears dark and the objects show up against this dark background. Therefore, darkfield is the method whereby the sample being viewed is actually in front of a dark background and light is being angled onto the sample from the sides. Under phase contrast conditions, the light coming through the specimen is shifted into two beams, one slightly out of phase with the other. This gets a little complicated to explain easily, but as far as equipment concerns you need two matched items in order to get phase contrast. One needs a phase annulus, and the matching lens objective. For instance, if you want 40x magnification phase contrast microscopy, you need a 40x phase lens, and a matched 40x phase annulus. If you want 100x phase, you need the 100x lens and the matched 100x phase annulus. Both the techniques of darkfield and phase contrast allow nearly invisible microorganisms within the blood to be lit up and seen. It also clearly delineates the blood cells. This method is in contrast to the standard microscope brightfield conditions where light shines directly through the viewed sample, and invisible particles remain invisible. To view a specimen in dark field, an opaque disc is placed underneath the condenser lens, so that only light that is scattered by objects on the slide can reach the eye.

Instead of coming up through the specimen, the light is reflected by particles on the slide. Everything is visible regardless of color, usually bright white against a dark background. Pigmented objects are often seen in false colors, that is, the reflected light is of a color different than the color of the object. Better resolution can be obtained using dark as opposed to bright field viewing. Sophisticated equipment is not necessary to get a dark field effect, but you do need a higher intensity light, since you are seeing only reflected light. At low magnification, up to 100x, any decent optical instrument can be set up so that light is reflected toward the viewer rather than passing through the object directly toward the viewer. The book entitled, Control of Colloid Stability through Zeta Potential was written by Thomas Riddick back in 1960. It was a masterful work which expressed all the nuances of zeta potential within colloidal systems and included insights into working with cardiovascular disease. Riddick spent thousands of hours researching how zeta potential is influenced by the mix of pH factors and electrolyte concentration in liquid suspensions. Zeta potential fluctuates up and down dependent on the pH, the concentration of the electrolytes in the liquid, and the specific conductance of the liquid which relates right back to the electrolyte concentration. We use specific conductance as a measure of the ability of a liquid medium to conduct electricity. We measure specific conductance on a scale called mho, also called siemen. One thing fascinating with work of Roddick was how zeta potential plays a role in all of life. In, How You Rot & Rust, it is mentioned how the colloids can have an urge to merge, how they merge and what they form into is all a function of the terrain to which they are exposed. What happened was, in the blood the terrain is a mix or ratio of anions and cations and other non-ionic substances. Two of these non-ionic substances in the body would be alcohol and sugar. Too much here and you create a steric hindrance - steric pertains to the spatial relationships of the atoms in molecules - which mean interference with ionic mobility and lessened zeta potential. So as dietary habits affect the levels of anions, cations and other substances in the bloodstream, the interplay of all these things leads to an overall measure of zeta potential. If zeta potential goes down - that is the charge between colloids decreases - the colloids come together. If zeta potential goes up the colloids disperse. Riddick illustrated the linking together of various polymers - the coming together of many different molecules - that might occur when zeta potential falls within various suspensions. As first viewed these images, these are the types of forms that are frequently seen in blood. And sure enough it is so because the blood is a colloidal suspension directly under the influence of anions, cations, and non-ionic substances which all influence the charge of zeta potential and it is this charge which is the final factor which influences the merging together of the blood colloids. The variety of developmental forms of microbes under different terrain conditions is what Lida Mattman observed. The driving factor is the ionic and non-ionic mix or concentration of the medium, and the ultimate measurable control is zeta potential. I do not doubt that multiple microbial looking forms may arise within equal measures of zeta potential, the determining factor being the ionic/non-ionic mix of the medium or terrain in which the microbe exists. When Guenther Enderlein made his observations of the endobiont, he was doing so from the framework of a biologist. He observed the pleomorphic nature of different fungal species in culture by varying their terrain, and observed the exact same type of forms in the blood by varying its terrain. This was all observation - and quite brilliant. DNA testing did not exist to correlate the theories. Today some preliminary work is being done on the observed forms in the blood and some of these things do not seem to correlate with thought process of Enderlein. Then again there are flaws in our knowledge of DNA. There may be fungal links in the blood which will be uncovered, as well as links to stealth pathogens. A lot of mysteries are yet to unfold. What we know for sure is that the terrain is everything. When we are dead, microbes in our body turn us back to dust. When we are alive and view living blood under the microscope, the worse it looks, the worse off we are. The faster it degenerates on a microscope slide, the faster we are degenerating internally. Underlying all of this is the basic interplay of the electron - anions and cations. The measurement of their influence is zeta potential. Increase zeta potential and the blood looks and acts healthier, decrease zeta potential and it is just the opposite.